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2016 Logan County Fall Farm Outlook Magazine
Lincoln Daily News
Oct. 27, 2016
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reminiscent of long hot days trudging through the
fields pulling or hoeing out weeds by hand. It
brought to mind, are we farming organic or are we
returning to ways of our dads and granddads, or is it
all just two ways of saying the same thing, “go back
to our roots, go back to the old ways?”
There is a lot to consider here. Organic farming
has merit when it comes to soil conservation, and
protecting water. It also has some serious pitfalls,
such as lower crop production, and more dollars
invested in labor.
Protecting waterways and ground water is a big
issue. In this day and age, we are seeing more
waterway contamination than ever before. It is
coming from various sources, but it sometimes
appears that it is the American Farmer that is
shouldering the majority of the blame for harmful
contaminants in our waterway. Runoff from
farm chemicals is an issue, but it isn’t the only
issue. When we see legislation before the federal
government, such as WOTUS (Waters of the U.S.),
we as agricultural producers can’t help but feel we
are being targeted and blamed for all the toxins in all
the water, on all the earth.
When recently asked the question ‘have we gone
too far,” Representative to Illinois Congressional
District 18, Darin LaHood, said he wasn’t going
to answer that specifically, but he would say the
federal government has gone too far. The federal
government, according to LaHood is regulating the
United States right out of business, and WOTUS is
an example. Hearing about the Illinois initiative for
clean water, he said that he was very much in favor
of letting the states determine their own clean water
protocol and that getting farmers involved in the
development of that plan was a plus.
In the year 2000, “GMO” became a consumer buzz
word, by accident. It was an accidental dumping
of StarLink Roundup Ready corn into a batch of
food-grade yellow corn for production of taco
shells that set many Americans on their ear. The
Roundup tolerant corn was not intended for human
consumption, yet there it was in the taco shells. The
GMO (or Genetically Modified Organism) corn was
just the beginning, as doubt about the validity of
mutating genes in plants became a new soap box for
environmental and health conscious consumers.
However, again, GMOs are not new, they just have
a different name. For years, gardeners, in particular,
have enjoyed “saving seeds” from plants they love.
They have chosen the plants that performed well,
and they tagged those plants, harvested the seeds,
dried them and saved the seeds with different genetic
traits for the next year.
Is GMO really any different? Scientists have
isolated genetic traits of a plant that are most
desirable, and have learned how to “save’ those traits
for future crop generations. The result is plants that
are stronger, more weather resistant, and greater
producers. Scientists believe adding to that genetic
structure, traits that help make the plant tolerant to
certain chemicals, is just the next natural step in
creating a better product.
There are those who will say we should have left
well enough alone when it comes to scientific
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