Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

Selecting seed corn is a decision that farmers should take very seriously, said Michael Stern, president of American Seeds, Inc. (ASI).

President of the third largest seed company in the United States, Stern recently spoke to Gold Country Seed staff holding their summer conference.

Dennis Sjogren, Gold Country Seed chief executive officer, invited about 150 people to hear Stern's vision for ASI.

Stern is based in St. Louis, Mo., and Gold Country Seed has headquarters in Hutchinson, Minn. The summer conference was held at the Grand Casino Mille Lacs Events and Convention Center in central Minnesota.

Stern's message is corn and soybean growers have choices about what they plant, what brands they plant and with whom they conduct business.

“Most importantly going forward is bringing value to our customer,” he said. “This is about building relationships. It's about working with our farmers and growers and making them successful. If they're successful, we'll be successful. We have to earn that success every year.”

ASI is a holding company established to support 20 regional seed businesses with capital, genetics and technology investments.

These investments allow the operating companies of ASI to directly connect farmer customers to significant innovations in genomics-based breeding and other new technologies. At the same time, each company continues to operate autonomously and locally. This allows each company the opportunity to provide service to their customers and build brand value.

ASI is owned by Monsanto, as is part of their U.S. Crop Production business.

“Fundamentally what we're seeing is a shift in agriculture from something that has historically been supply driven to something that is now demand driven,” Stern said. “That is a huge, huge change.”

Global agriculture's goals include feeding the planet with expanding population in countries like China and India. With many people moving into a global middle class lifestyle, grain consumption has increased.

Stern believes agriculture also plays an important role in renewable energy technology.

“We need to do it all,” he said. “We need to go ahead and provide grain for food and animal feed, as well as for fuel.”

For the United States to once again become “the Bread Basket to the World,” Monsanto has a goal of 300 bushels per acre corn and 90-bushel soybeans across the United States by 2030.

Several new technologies are coming from Monsanto that will help meet those goals.

For every $10 a farmer spends with ASI, $1 is used for research and development. Monsanto spends about $800 million annually, or $2.2 million each day on seed trait research.

Determining priorities for the future to maximize value to the customer is a challenge. ASI has a commitment to invest in new technologies that will benefit growers moving forward.

“We're really focused on sharing and creating value,” Stern said. “That's the only way we'll be successful. If we're going to be successful, our customers have to be successful.”

The benefits of biotechnology include offering a higher quality of life for many farm families, greater herbicide application flexibility, methods to protect and maximize yield potential, greater on-farm convenience, reductions in pesticide use and reductions in costs associated with farming.

Monsanto and ASI's investment in next generation technologies, backed by a focus on breeding a better seed product, is expected to deliver new innovations for years to come.

Since the introduction of biotechnology in corn, beginning in 1996, U.S. corn yields have increased an average of 32 bushels by 2008, Stern said.

The situation is similar with soybeans, he added. Yield increases in soybeans have not been as significant as with corn - although biotech has added about a 6-bushel-per-acre increase.

“We'll continue to see improvements in soybean yields with the launch of our Roundup RReady2Yield varieties in the future,” he said.

Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences intend to release a joint brand called SmartStax in 2010.

Combining Dow AgroSciences' Herculex I (1 gene) Insect Protection and Monsanto's Second Generation Corn Borer trait, YieldGard VT PRO (2 genes), SmartStax will provide comprehensive protection against corn borer, corn earworm, fall armyworm, western bean cutworm and black cutworm.

Combining Dow AgroSciences' Herculex RW (2 genes) Rootworm Protection technology and Monsanto's YieldGard VT Rootworm (1 gene)/RR2 technology, SmartStax will provide comprehensive protection against corn rootworm.

Finally, bringing together Monsanto's Roundup Ready 2 (1 gene) trait with Liberty Link herbicide tolerance (1 gene), SmartStax offers broad-spectrum weed and grass control with the option of two modes-of-action.

“It's going to give us a lot of durability with the products going forward, and an opportunity for a reduction in refuge acres,” Stern said.

The 2010 launch of a SmartStax platform will serve as the base for adding other biotech traits or genes in the future. These products could include drought tolerance, nitrogen utilization and cold tolerance.

“A lot of these products are already invented,” Stern said. “It's not like we're trying to fish around for these. It takes eight or nine years for us to develop a product - but these are items we understand right now. This is the real stuff in plants growing right now. It's very exciting.”

Products in the pipeline also include ways for increasing and enhancing corn yields, disease and insect tolerance, stalk and root strength and improvements in kernel qualities - like starch, oil and protein.

In soybeans, greater yields are also expected through new biotechnology traits. Biotechnology products will be stacked on the second generation Roundup RReady2Yield platform.

These include soybean cyst nematode built-in resistance, insect protection, dicamba herbicide tolerance, and third generation herbicide-tolerance technology to protect against weed resistance. Improved oil and protein composition, yield stability, water-use efficiency soybeans and disease tolerance are also in the soybean pipeline.

“Year after year we are offering new technology and value propositions that can make farmer operations better and more successful in the future,” Stern said.

Monsanto and ASI, he said, will continue to invest in research and innovation - in biotechnology as well as traditional genetics. The companies are also looking at the value of satellite technology to better understand the relationships of biotechnology, farmland and environment.