What do they do?

As a disclaimer, this is the densest post I've ever written. I normally strive for brevity and simplicity, but this is a complex topic. Yes, the details regarding corn breeding sound like something from high school science class, but, they are important to understand as the entire state of Hawai'i becomes embroiled in the debate over industrial agriculture. As we all engage in this conversation, I believe that we need to understand exactly what the seed companies do. Also thank you to Ryan Oyama, Kristen Ma, Jen Vaughn, and Sarah Styan from DuPont Pioneer for taking three hours out of their work-day to show me and my dad what they do. Special thanks to Sarah for answering my endless email inquiries and giving me a much-needed crash course on biology and corn breeding.  

"The vast majority of farmers in the world farm because it is their only option.  In many cases, it is a failing option.  The global food ecosystem is complex; we need to develop a deeper understanding of where food comes from and what people who grow it have to endure."
- Howard G. Buffet

What do the seed companies do? I’m embarrassed to say that that is not a question that I’d given much thought to. All I knew about corn was that I was a failure of a corn farmer (apparently bugs like corn as much as people).  Despite my agricultural woes, I knew enough to notice the disparate rhetoric regarding the seed companies. One side says they test poisons and aren’t real farmers while the other wears t-shirts that say we are ag. One side calls them chemical companies, the other calls them seed companies. One side says they spray pesticides nearly every day, the other side says they don't spray any more than a conventional farm. Which one of those contradictory beliefs is true? Since I had no idea, I went to DuPont Pioneer to find out. As I expected, the answers aren't so simple. 

What do they do?
They grow inbred lines of corn in order to produce improved inbred lines that can be used in hybrid combinations in the pursuit of improving yield for farmers. To understand what that means, it's important to understand a little about corn reproduction and the 20th century history of corn farming.  

Corn can pollinate itself or be pollinated by pollen from other corn plants within a few hundred feet. Each plant produces both tassels (male part) and kernels (female). Each kernel has a silk connected to it, which catches a single grain of pollen in order to fertilize. That means that every kernel can be pollinated from a different plant. And, because of genetic variability (in the same process that makes each human being different, you also never know how the genes will recombine in each individual pollination), you end up with an ear that is highly variable containing seed (kernels) that may also be highly variable. With human intervention (selecting the best kernels to replant), corn slowly evolved over the millennia from its wild ancestor to the corn of the 20th century. However, in the 1940s, hybridization completely changed the rules of the game.  

If you take a corn plant and ensure that it's self pollinated (meaning that you take pollen from the tassels and sprinkle it on its own silk) the next generation will have both less genetic variability and less vigor than if you allowed it to open pollinate from other plants. This is where the bulk of the work at Pioneer occurs. Because there is genetic variability between each inbred line, they need to select which plants have the traits (genes) that they are looking for. Some traits can be observed while others need to be genetically tested for. The best of each generation is then used as seed for the next crop, and the process continues. After about seven generations of selecting the best of the best, you are left with a crop of inbred lines that is less vigorous than the genetically diverse crop you started with, but they are now genetically uniform with the exact traits that the breeder initially selected them for.   

Breeders will then take those two genetically distinct inbred lines and combine them in what is known as hybridization. This can be done by planting alternate rows of two inbred lines, each with traits that they want to combine. One variety will be de-tassled (pollen source taken away) and the other will remain intact. The de-tassled plant (which is now a female) is then guaranteed to be pollinated by the other variety that is now the sole source of pollen. The resulting kernels from each ear of the de-tassled plant now have the genes of both distinct parents and can grow into a new plant that is significantly more vigorous and better yielding than either of the parents. This phenomena is known as hybrid vigor or heterosis.

If this new hybrid plant is better than any existing corn, then the seed company will use it as seed corn. Out of 1000 test crosses, one will be a winner. Since generally less than one pound of seed will exist for this new "grand champion" hybrid, it takes three more years to plant out the inbred lines en-masse, and then cross those lines into hybrid seed corn.  The entire process (from development of specific traits, to inbreeding, to seed production and hybridization) can take up to 13 years. Modern farmers do not have the time or technological resources to do plant breeding or hybrid seed production, so that is where Hawai'i and the seed companies fit in.  

In 1926, DuPont Pioneer was the first company to market hybrid corn seed. Over the century, corn yields exploded 600% from 25 bushels per acre to 150 bushels per acre.  Whereas one American farmer in 1926 was feeding 26 people, one American farmer now feeds over 155. This is due both to genetic gains associated with hybrids, and other advances in agricultural research. On the graph above, you can see the massive yield increases from hybridization as opposed to soybean, which is not a hybrid crop.  

However, the one draw-back of hybrid plants is that you only have one generation of genetic uniformity. If you save seed from hybrid crops, the resulting progeny will be genetically variable and likely will produce lower yields. So, in order to get the benefit of increased yields and predictability, seed needs to be purchased from someone willing to go through the years of plant breeding and hybrid production. Which is why the major seed companies have been so successful.  

So, what goes on behind the intimidating guard shack across the Russian Fort is less sinister and more mundane than I'd imagined. Farmers from around the world come to Pioneer with a request for certain traits: including adaptation to regional soil type and rain fall, disease resistance, plant architecture, time to maturity, pesticide resistance, etc. Breeders around the world will send kernels of plants with desirable traits to Kaua'i for the scientists here to plant, so that they can be pollinated for testing in other locations, to cross pollinate to test hybrid performance, or to add particular traits through breeding. They do it in Hawai'i because our extra growing season allows them to develop inbreds twice as fast as it would take in a temperate climate.

Do they spray more often than conventional farms? 

The traits important for each plant breeder are determined by the region they are focused on. The traits (including biotech traits) are all developed and tested on the mainland. Because the plant breeding process is so time consuming, they will only develop inbreds strains from plants with proven genetic traits. For example, round-up resistance is a biotech trait that was developed by Monsanto. Pioneer will license that trait and breeders will cross pollinate a round-up resistant inbred with an inbred that has other desirable traits. The herbicide resistant trait, before it is ever cross pollinated, is extensively tested for efficacy (by, for example, spraying it with round-up).

Just to reiterate, because this part is important, the traits themselves are developed on the mainland. What they are doing on Kaua'i is merely growing out the inbreds in order to enable the breeders to eventually pick the best inbred parent to be crossed with another inbred to get a hybrid that will (hopefully) be good enough to sell to farmers. Because the development of the traits (including, for example, genetically modified herbicide resistance) is done on the mainland, the crops on Kaua'i are grown under the same conditions that they ultimately will be on the farm. Each test plot is roughly 36 sq feet and contains about 25 plants, and pesticides are applied to each particular plot based only on need (i.e. an insect infestation). So, while the companies are spraying more than 250 days per year, the average application area is very, very small. Whereas, on a conventional farm, pesticide application occurs less often, but over a thousand-fold more area.*

Why are they necessary?

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is predicting that we need to increase food production by 70% to feed the population by 2050. There are only two ways to increase production: more productivity per acre or more acres of productivity. The FAO predicts that 80% of our increased production will come from increased yields, and the rest will come from expanding farm land in Sub Saharan Africa. So, in order to minimize the expansion of farm land we are dependent on breeders such as Pioneer to continue research into increasing yields.  

Yet, as I've written before, we have some distressing issues with our food system that we also need to work on solving. Government subsidies for corn production leads to cheap processed food, effectively killing off small farms; we are losing topsoil at distressing rates; nitrogen fertilizer has created massive dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico; one calorie of industrially grown food takes up to 10 calories of fossil fuels to grow and distribute; agricultural operations contribute to 10% of total US carbon emissions, making it a significant driver of climate change; we are over-exposed to pesticides (agricultural drift, household use, and in our food); while Americans are overweight and unhealthy from excess calories, 925 million people don't have access to enough food. 

Of all of those issues, the single most important one is the inequality inherent in our food supply. When you're starving, you're less likely to pursue an education and more likely to cut down the rain forest next door in search of arable land.  Applicable to food security on Kaua'i as much as the world, the United Nations report on hunger says that solving the hunger crisis "requires an integrated approach, which would include: public and private investments to raise agricultural productivity; better access to inputs, land, services, technologies and markets; measures to promote rural development; social protection for the most vulnerable, including strengthening their resilience to conflicts and natural disasters; including specific nutrition programmes..."  Reducing the inequities and externalities inherent in industrial agriculture requires accurately identifying the problems and then using a mix of government intervention as well as consumer education. As Howard Buffet writes: "but in the end, improving food security for almost one billion people will require the use of the best practices at many different scales, tuned to local conditions, to achieve success."  

Our next questions should be:

As an integral part of the complex food chain of American industrial agriculture, how can we on Kaua'i work to both support reducing global malnourishment while working to fix the problems mentioned above?  

Are the current voluntary buffer zones (100' on residences, 1000' on hospitals and schools) and disclosure being utilized by the seed companies adequate? If not, what is?  

What is the barrier to increasing local food production on Kaua'i? Access to land? Capital? Lack of a market? Lack of willing farmers? How do we utilize that information to reverse the trend of declining farms? 

Are the seed companies a barrier to local food production? If so, why?


* Edit 09/24/14 -- Just to clarify, I purposely didn't answer the question of "do they spray more" because I don't have the answer.  But, as I recently heard from a friend who works for one of the companies, while they are spraying in response to pest pressures (like a conventional farm), on average they are still probably spraying more for two reasons:

1) Seed crops stay in the field longer to dry out, so, just based on time in the ground, on average they're being sprayed more than other crops.* (edit 09/25/14-- not verified and potentially not true).

2) There is more pressure from insects, mold, and weeds in the tropics than on the mainland.  So, while spraying in response to those things, they are inevitably going to spray more (as any conventional farmer in Hawai'i likely is).

The complexity and nuance in that simple question is one of the primary reasons that I have consistently advocated for disclosure. As the state/county studies further to ensure the health and safety of those on the west side, it's important to know what and how much is being sprayed.