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'Short Corn' Could Bring Big Change to Midwest

Smaller, sturdier plants are better able to withstand powerful windstorms
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Sep 23, 2024 2:22 PM CDT
Short Corn Could Become 'New Normal' in Midwest
Cameron Sorgenfrey holds a tall corn stalk next to a short corn stalk along one of his fields, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024, in Wyoming, Iowa.   (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower. The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid cows. But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long.

  • The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change, the AP reports.
  • The corn's smaller stature and sturdier base enable it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph. The smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. That is especially helpful as farmers have endured several years of low prices that are forecast to continue. The smaller stalks could also lead to less water use at a time of growing drought concerns.

  • "As you drive across the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you're going to see a lot of this out there," said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer who has been growing newly developed short corn for several years, sometimes prompting puzzled looks from neighboring farmers. "I think this is going to change agriculture in the Midwest."
  • US farmers grow corn on about 90 million acres each year, usually making it the nation's largest crop, so it's hard to overstate the importance of a potential large-scale shift to smaller-stature corn, says Dior Kelley, an assistant professor at Iowa State University who is researching different paths for growing shorter corn. "It is huge. It's a big, fundamental shift," Kelley says.

  • Researchers have long focused on developing plants that could grow the most corn but recently there has been equal emphasis on other traits, such as making the plant more drought-tolerant or able to withstand high temperatures. Although there already were efforts to grow shorter corn, the demand for innovations by private companies such as Bayer and academic scientists soared after an intense windstorm—called a derecho—plowed through the Midwest in August 2020.
  • The storm killed four people and caused $11 billion in damage, with the greatest destruction in a wide strip of eastern Iowa. The damage to a corn crop only weeks from harvest was especially stunning ."It looked like someone had come through with a machete and cut all of our corn down," Kelley said. Or as Sorgenfrey, the Iowa farmer who endured the derecho put it, "Most of my corn looked like it had been steamrolled." To test short corn's resistance, researchers hover over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind.
  • Brian Leake, a Bayer spokesman, says the company has been developing short corn for more than 20 years. Bayer expects to ramp up its production in 2027, and Leake says he hopes that by later in this decade, farmers will be growing short corn everywhere. "We see the opportunity of this being the new normal across both the US and other parts of the world," he says.
(More corn stories.)

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