GM Crop Producer Monsanto Using Data Analytics To Expand Its Footprint

In fact I do. I farm roughly 3000 acres. We religiously stick to a 4 year rotation. Spring wheat, Canola, Winter Wheat, Legume. Any tighter of a rotation leads to massive disease problems (which, by the way, have nothing to do with GMO crops). My rotations are limited by several factors: soil type, total heat units, availability of water, labor, and most importantly, machinery investment. There are some crops I simply cannot grow because they would lead to massive soil erosion either in spring before the crop overs the ground and in the winter when only residue is left. Other crops I can't grow because they are too labor intensive for my operation. I currently don't have any row-crop equipment, so that precludes beats, potatoes,corn, etc. But my current equipment allows just a small number of people to effectively manage the crops I do grow.

In days of old, in my area, rotation really wasn't possible at all because it was too dry to grow anything but wheat and rye. Now with high-efficiency irrigation, everything from corn, potatoes beans, peas, wheat, canola, onions, dill, mint, and many other crops are grown. On a large scale, there is now more diversity in crops in my area than there ever was. However, these crops are grown in large fields (no smaller than 130 acres), so that leads to local monoculture, and also a difficulty in controlling weeds.

I do happily grow roundup-ready canola, and sometimes soybeans. I have relatively few qualms (except those I list below) with growing roundup-resistant broad-leafed crops. However roundup-ready wheats or grasses would be a very bad thing. The reason is that broadleaf weeds are easy to control with standard, relatively benign chemicals even if they are resistant to round-up, whereas grassy weeds not so much, especially wild oats. Likewise, I strongly oppose the current research into 24D-resistant soybeans because such plants, when volunteer weeds, would be much more difficult to control.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/vKuoVj1bTQ0/story01.htm

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