And with enthusiasm. It should be a banner year for biotech cotton too, according to federal projections released Friday. And genetically modified corn will likely hold steady, accounting for about a quarter of the total U.S. corn crop. This, despite growing public unease over tinkering with the food supply and tough international strictures against genetically engineered products. The ensuing uproar exposed how difficult it is to segregate genetically engineered crops.
Pollen drifts from one field to another.
Stray biotech kernels stick to farm equipment and roll off into batches of non-engineered crops. Mix-ups happen at seed companies, in grain elevators, in processing mills. And it has proved to be impossible to catch every slip. The uncertainty has cost some farmers big. Yet it has not diminished their excitement about a technology that lets scientists splice a gene from, say, soil bacteria into a soybean plant, giving the crop remarkable new properties.