1996: The Year Farming Changed Forever

This Week In Ag #177

It was 1996. Michael Jordan redefined greatness on the hardwood, leading the Chicago Bulls to 72 wins in route to another NBA Championship. Six Friends transformed coffee houses into social hubs. Soccer moms changed the political narrative. And a young Tiger was set to revolutionize golf.

1996 was also the year farming changed forever. Letters such as GMO, GPS and Bt became entrenched in our vocabulary. We were witnessing change unfold before our very eyes, on screens and in fields.

Military-based GPS (Global Positioning Systems) signals had recently become available to those outside the government. This allowed enterprising ag companies, the first being Ag Leader, to utilize these signals for space-age technology. Farmers equipped their combines with receivers, sensors and monitors that revealed yield data and grain moisture content on-the-go, in real time. This data was used to create production maps for each field, allowing you to analyze the performance of seed, fertilizer, chemicals and cultural practices. GPS technology would soon enable auto-steer and other breakthroughs. In those early days, system setup and monitor calibration were complicated and cumbersome, and technical support lagged. But nothing beat the first-time thrill of seeing those big yield numbers light up when you crossed over a sweet spot in the field. It was the ultimate rush in farming!

The biotech boom was unleashed with the introduction of Bt corn. This in-plant technology allowed farmers to effectively control European corn borer (ECB), unaffectionately known as the “billion-dollar bug”. This was THE pest in the Corn Belt. Multiple generations of ECB larvae would feed on leaves, then burrow into stalks and ear shanks to feed on internal plant tissue, causing excessive yield damage or even ear droppage. Farmers had to intensively scout their crops in those days (a novel concept, I know) for egg masses and shot-hole feeding, which was difficult to do, then determine economic thresholds for chemical treatment. Foliar sprays could be hit or miss, depending on timing and efficacy. Bt corn produces proteins toxic to the pest. Results were spotty in the early years. Fields with high ECB populations benefited significantly, producing yields 20 bu/A better, while yield gains were minimal or non-existent in fields with low populations. Since early Bt technology was not yet widely adopted across parent lines, many conventional hybrids would outyield Bt counterparts due to genetic progress. But over time, Bt hybrids soon became the norm, and paved the way for in-plant protection of other pests.

We were introduced to the term “refuge acres.” This is a strategy to preserve and prolong in-plant technologies. Through EPA guidelines, farmers were required to plant Bt corn on only 80% of a field’s acreage. The remaining 20% had to be planted with conventional corn hybrids, thus forming a refuge that would produce susceptible insects that could mate with any resistant insects that emerged from the Bt crop. These offspring will not survive on the Bt product, which limits the spread of resistance in the pest population. If two resistant moths mated, any resulting offspring would be resistant, and their populations would spread more rapidly. While refuge acres are effective, Mother Nature always finds a way. Pest resistance is now a key issue that farmers and the ag industry must manage.

The introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans made weed control easy: plant genetically modified Roundup-resistant soybean varieties, wait about six weeks, then spray the field with Roundup. Everything died except the soybeans. Roundup Ready soybeans and Bt corn were the first of many biotech breakthroughs that made farming easy (at least at the time) and set back crop scouting, Integrated Pest Management and pesticide R&D for decades.

Freedom to Farm Act, introduced in the 1996 Farm Bill, overhauled US farm policy. It shifted from Depression-era supply controls that included set-aside acres (which paid farmers to take portions of their farmland out of production) to market-driven policies that allowed farmers to plant what they wanted.

Hard to believe all this progress (well, if you can call it that) occurred together, thirty years ago. Never had farming seen so much change in one year. Little did we know, it was just the beginning.