WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government predicts farmers will sharply boost their plantings of genetically engineered crops this year, despite lingering international resistance to biotech food.
Farmers are expected to grow more than 79 million acres of genetically engineered corn and soybeans this year, a 13 percent increase from last year, according to the Agriculture Department's annual spring survey of farmers' planting intentions. The crops are engineered to produce their own pesticide or to make them resistant to a weedkiller.
About 74 percent of the soybean crop, or 54 million acres, will be genetically engineered, up from 68 percent last year and 54 percent in 2000, the department said Thursday.
Some 32 percent of the corn crop, or 25.3 million acres, will be of biotech varieties, up from 26 percent in 2001 and 25 percent the year before.
The gene-altered crops require fewer chemicals, making them easier and cheaper to grow. There has been strong consumer resistance to agricultural biotechnology in Europe and Japan, but most U.S.-grown corn and soy is used domestically.
"The farmer looks at it strictly from profitability," said commodities analyst Don Roose. "They're not shying away from it."
Another 10.5 million acres of cotton, or about 71 percent of this year's cotton crop, will be bioengineered. Last year, 69 percent of the cotton was gene-altered.
The biotech soybeans contain a bacterium gene that makes them immune to a powerful weedkiller, known by the trade name Roundup. In some cases, farmers can get by with treating their fields just once a year to keep away yield-robbing weeds. Fields seeded with conventionally bred varieties can require many sprayings with different types of chemicals.
In Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas and Indiana, at least 80 percent of the soybean crop is expected to be biotech.
The popular varieties of biotech cotton are either Roundup-immune or else produce their own pesticide. Most of the biotech corn that farmers plant makes its own pesticide.
The crops were first commercialized in the mid- to late 1990s, and USDA has been surveying their use nationally since 2000.
The latest report "shows the continued high confidence that U.S. farmers have placed in seeds improved through biotechnology," said Michael Phillips of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
The Agriculture Department survey also predicts that farmers will increase their total plantings of corn this year, while cutting back on soybeans, wheat and cotton.
The total corn crop is expected to reach 79 million acres, up 4 percent from 2001, while plantings of soybeans are expected to drop 2 percent to 73 million acres. Farmers gave a variety of reasons for planting less soy, including uncertainty about how the government will subsidize the commodity after lawmakers finish an overhaul of farm programs.
The wheat crop this year is expected to total 59 million acres, down 1 percent from last year and the lowest level in 30 years.
The cotton crop is estimated at 14.8 million acres this year, 6 percent below last year.
