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Kansas Court Rules For Corn Farmers Against Syngenta

June 23, 2017

Today, a federal jury in Kansas City ordered Syngenta AG to pay almost $218 million to 7,000 Kansas farmers. The farmers claimed that, in 2010, Syngenta commercialized a GMO corn seed--Agrisure Viptera--before that variety was approved for export to China.

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Lawyers claim that the damages owed corn farmers will eventually total $5.77 billion

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The Friday verdict included only compensatory damages, and Syngenta will appeal the verdict. A simple math calculation shows that the verdict totaled about $31,000 per farmer.

According to this Reuters story, thousands of other corn producers are also seeking damages for the same reason. Lawyers for the corn producers claim that this is "only the beginning", adding that damages will total $5.77 billion dollars: 25 times more than this ruling. The damages are based upon the price of corn dropping sharply in 2013, when China refused shipment of millions of tons of the unapproved GMO strain.

Syngenta denies wrongdoing--and in what could be interpreted as a thinly veiled threat--said, "We are disappointed with today's verdict because it will only serve to deny American farmers access to future technologies even when they are fully approved in the U.S."

Ironically, Syngenta is now owned by a Chinese company, China National Chemical Corporation, after a $43 billion purchase in early 2016.

We wonder what happened to the Viptera corn that was produced in the two seasons prior to the Chinese ban...

KSU Wheat Test Plots

June 14, 2017

Tonight we attended the KSU Wheat Day, which is a review of more than two dozen wheat test plots which are located 5 miles south of Wheeler, Kansas, on the west side of the highway.

There were more than forty farmers attending, and detailed descriptions of each wheat variety were given by Erick De Wolf, Plant Pathology KSU, Lucas Haag, Extension Agronomy Specialist from Colby, and Jeanne Falk Jones, K-State agronomist.

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Combat wheat streak mosaic with volunteer control, delayed wheat planting, and resistant varieties.

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Because of the extensive damage this year to wheat in western Kansas due to wheat streak mosaic (WSM), many questions were asked about that viral disease. WSM is spread in the fall with the wheat curl mite as a vector for WSM (and two other very similar viruses). In many cases this year, large areas of wheat were damaged so badly that they won't be harvested, reported De Wolf.

There is no chemical control for the curl mite, so the primary protections against WSM consist of three basic options: planting WSM resistant wheat varieties, controlling volunteer wheat in late August for perhaps a mile around the planted wheat, and delaying wheat planting for 7-10 days. None of these options provides perfect protection, but a combination of techniques will help, according to De Wolf.

Stripe rust in wheat was another topic, and De Wolf pointed out which varieties are more resistant to the various rusts: stripe, leaf, and stem. Planting these resistant varieties can provide benefits in a year when rust is prevalent, including less damage from the disease, and the option to delay or omit treatment, depending upon rust severity and timing.

When questioned about the issue of common fungicides losing efficacy due to resistance by rust, De Wolf said that tebuconazoles would likely have a gradual loss of efficacy, while the strobilurin family might lose resistance quickly, in a "step-wise" fashion. Some research on the issue is being done in the Northwest US, and resistance has been found in some cases in that region.

After harvest, yield data will be available from the wheat test plots. Jeanne Falk Jones will send it to everyone on her email list. You can join her excellent email list by contacting her.