We have been having interesting email discussions on issues raised related to this proposal. In this Frequently Asked Question we will address some of the issues raised by visitors to this site. These discussions are an important part of the development process in creating a new model of breeding corn.
Originally, we envisioned this model working on a pretty small scale. The size range would be from growing corn for grain in a large garden up to the size of a small family farm growing enough field corn for grain for their own use and to feed a few animals. This could include subsistence farmers growing primarily for their own food, small market gardeners, up to the size of Amish farms growing mixed crops for livestock and milk production. In general the target group would be anyone who is growing corn for grain who picks their corn by hand. Most of the people we know who are growing corn now fall into this category, grow up to a couple of acres. Amish families (with large families) could grow more maybe up to somewhere around 5 acres. So the cut off is between those farmers who pick by hand and those who harvest by machine.
In general, it doesn�t pay to buy corn grain harvesting equipment for small acreages because the equipment is very expensive and you can�t justify the investment in expensive equipment for such small acreages. Custom combiners have only a very short window of harvesting weather in an area and they may not find it profitable to do small lots of corn if larger acreages area available. As a result, there seems to be a well established niche for the small corn grower who picks grain corn by hand.
It has also become clear in our discussions that if we really going to have any significant impact on corn breeding and corn agricultural at a regional level, we need to understand the needs of the production farmer who will be growing quantities of grain corn that will require machine harvesting. This is the scale that will have the most impact on the food supply for any given area and has to be an important consideration in developing a new model of breeding and growing Regional High Diversity Gene Pools for Open Pollinated Corn.
It might be a good idea to look at hand and machine picking as 2 separate but closely related niches. First from the point of view of the breeder who is working to meet the needs of the small grower, it is a lot easier to work to develop a breed that performs well for the grower who picks their corn by hand than to breed to the more demanding standards of being able to deal with machine harvesting. A grower who picks by hand is looking for a corn that picks reasonably well with good yields and traits that work well under their environmental conditions. For the small scale breeder who is also a small scale grower, it takes a lot less breeding work to release a good corn that will be picked by hand than a good machine pick corn.
Let�s take a closer look at the profile of the current small scale grower who picks by hand. Most of the small farmers we know are either growing food to for their own use or to sell at farmers markets, road side stands, or in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model (customers buy shares in the harvest). At this scale, picking by hand is the only option available to them because of their size. Small farmers of this size come from many backgrounds, some from families who have lived in the area for their whole lives to people who have recently entered agriculture from other areas and backgrounds. A visit to your local farmers market will give you a good view of the variety of the backgrounds now in small scale farming. Historically, the small subsistence farmer was often the pioneer family farm. People moved into an area with whatever resources they could bring with them. Many had only a few basic tools, some garden crops and a good field corn to feed live stock and for their own use as corn bread. Corn grows well on recently cleared land and with some chickens and pigs you can get through the first few difficult years of setting up a farm. In the 1960�s we had a movement of people back to the land. Many of those early pioneers eventually found the transition difficult and moved back to urban areas or moved away from living on the land. A small but significant number stayed and developed their own systems of living on the land. Even today there is a significant number of young people interested in going back to the land or into market gardening. Given the current economic conditions where many people are losing their jobs, we can expect more people to see advantages in moving to a land situation or a small farm as an alternative to depending on an uncertain economy. These new pioneers will need to be able to get started with a minimum of investment as buying land may take most of their money and getting through the first few years will be critical. So it looks like this small farm niche is broad based, growing, and here to stay.
It is important to keep in mind that the small scale farmer has been the backbone of the evolution of corn. Most of corn�s evolution has been with the Native Americans who grew enough corn to feed themselves and their tribes. In many parts of the world this is still the basis of agriculture. Given increasingly difficult conditions in the world economy we could expect that many people in 3 rd world countries who went to the world�s cities to find work will return to their relatives in the country to support themselves in small farming operations as economic conditions in the cities worsen. The small subsistence farmers are the peasants of the world. In the US, many of us are what you might call �Affluent Peasants� because we can bring improved tools, a wide selection of options in plant varieties, and modern advantages (like rototillers, low wheel cultivators [for faster weeding], internet access [to agricultural information and like minded people], solar panels, etc.) to help us in our work. The newly emerging niche of the small subsistence farmer may provide a needed alternative to the unstable economic times that seems to be facing the whole world economy. So the need for hand harvested corn is still strong and potentially growing.
This leads us to an important consideration, breeders of corn for small scale farmers will generally come from people who are already growing corn at a small scale and after a number of years growing corn start to �tinker� with growing their own corn variety. If we can provide a model with general guidelines that are proven to work with corn then we can encourage more growers from this group to work towards breeding for improved corn. The small scale farmer can not afford to put too much extra work into breeding corn, so the methods used here have to be a minimum of extra work and still produce good usable corn crops for the farmer throughout the development of the new corn variety. Since this group does not have to select for machine harvest, then it is within the abilities of most small growers who have an interest in breeding corn to develop a significantly improved breed, with a minimum of extra work, in a reasonable time frame. At this point in time �significantly improved� means that you just need to be better than the currently grown varieties used by this group of farmers. Most small farmers are using only one variety (most likely a traditional one). Most of these traditional varieties are not very diverse and often not well adapted to the farms they are grown on. So significantly improved does not provide too high a standard for the new breeder to meet.
The small scale grower and breeder is the model we are presenting in this proposal. Basically, small growers will become breeders and release to their neighbors and the seed stock will spread throughout a region and this will spark the interest of other growers to become breeders and this will lead to a new regional breeding program for corn that allows regions to become areas of local corn production in seed, livestock feed and for human consumption (corn bread, Johnny cake). This will allow them to be free of the need to rely on big corporations to supply them with high cost seed each year for their crops. Hybrid seed makes the farmer completely dependant on large corporations for seed and unlike Regional High Diversity OP Corn Gene Pools, hybrid corn can not adapt to local climates changes over time. In the face of Global Warming, the only thing that we can be sure of is that the climate and weather will change over time and we need crops that can change with the times. Hybrid corn is designed to produce well under a very narrow range of conditions and the only way to change a hybrid it to redevelop new ones and that takes times and cost a good deal of money. Both of those commodities may be in short supply in difficult economic conditions ahead under a climate stressed by global warming.
The production farm niche is a very important scale that will be increasingly in demand because it can help facilitate a transition to a more local agricultural economy. For example, in areas where dairy farmers buy corn from the mid west, local production farms could meet the demand for grain locally and keep more money in the local economy. As fuel prices begin to rise more in the future as more countries compete for less available oil, local producers will be at an advantage in having low transportation costs and will increasingly be able to sell to their neighbors. The niche for production farming of corn for grain, will make more rigorous demands on the breeder of a regionally adapted corn, but has the potential for delivering an increasing demand for locally grown corn and move us towards a more locally based agricultural economy.
Based on the experience of breeding for small scale farmers, it seems to us that it might be a good idea to look at a transition to the larger production scale farm model (for machine harvesting) that may need to move forward in stages. Dave Christensen, who developed the short season stress resistant corn Painted Mountain, has been working on his variety for over 37 years and he has just recently started to select for machine harvest. So it may make sense for those breeders looking to create corn suited to the production farming to work in stages. Perhaps first developing a corn that meets both the needs of the Small Scale Grower and the Production Farmer would be a good start. Once the corn has shown promise then the breeder can begin selecting for machine harvest. The advantage in going in stages is that the breeder may be able to get small scale growers to test their corns for meeting the needs of the small grower (who doesn�t care about machine harvest) before selection for machine harvest begins. Small Scale Growers have very similar requirements to the Production Farmers in their need for a good dependable productive corn adapted to the region. This means that those growers who decide to breed for the production farmer may be able to move through stages, much like Painted Mountain did, and supply both the small scale grower (in the early stages of testing) and eventually select their stock for the machine harvestable corn later in the program. This will give incentive to small growers to grow the new corn adapted to their needs, and for the breeder to have good solid field tests before selecting for machine harvest. Few production growers would be interested in growing test corns that were not already machine harvestable. Under this model a new corn could move through the Small Scale Grower niche first and then into the Production Farming niche, in stages as needed.
In the end, breeders may be able to release selections for both the small grower niche (in their climate and region) and the production niche (for machine harvest) selected from the same breeding stock. In addition, breeders who only release to the small growers may find that small growers who move into the production farming scale may end up selecting for machine harvest from their same small scale farm corn. New strains of a machine harvestable corn may appear from Small Scale Farming seed stocks and be improved on by other farmers. This could stimulate rapid improvement in all aspects of local corn farming. and provide test trial opportunities for breeders (who are working toward a production corn) that they might not have otherwise had available to them.