‘Short corn’ could replace huge cornfields crushed by climate change

WYOMING, Iowa — Taking a late summer road trip through the Midwest means venturing into the corn areawinding between 12-foot-high leafy green walls that seem block almost everything apart from the sun and an occasional water tower.

Cornfields that resemble skyscrapers are as much a part of rural America as cavernous red barns and placid cows.

But soon, that towering corn could become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half the size of the green giants that have dominated the fields for so long.

“As you drive around the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you’re going to see a lot of this stuff,” said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer who has been growing newly developed short corn for several years, sometimes drawing puzzled looks from neighboring farmers. “I think it’s going to change.” agriculture in the Midwest.

Short-stem corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of giving farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate changeCorn’s smaller size and sturdier base allow it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph — researchers fly over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind.

Smaller plantations also allow farmers to plant at a greater density, allowing them to grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. This is particularly helpful because farmers have experienced several years of low prices that are expected to continue.

Smaller stems could also lead to less water use during growth. drought concerns.

U.S. farmers grow corn on about 80 million acres (36 million hectares) each year, making it typically the nation’s largest crop. So it’s hard to overstate the importance of a potential large-scale shift to smaller-sized corn, said Dior Kelley, an assistant professor at Iowa State University who studies different ways to grow smaller-sized corn. Last year, U.S. farmers grew more than 1,000 pounds (400 tons) of corn, most of which was used for animal feed, the fuel additive ethanol, or exported to other countries.

“It’s huge. It’s a fundamental and massive change,” Kelley said.

Researchers have long focused on plants in development Corn is the most widely grown crop, but recently other traits have also come into focus, such as resistance to drought or high temperatures. While there have been efforts to grow shorter corn, demand for innovations from private companies like Bayer and university scientists has skyrocketed after a severe windstorm, called a derecho, ravaged the Midwest. in August 2020.

The storm killed four people and caused an estimated $11 billion in damage, with the heaviest damage occurring in a wide swath of eastern Iowa, where winds topped 100 mph. In cities like Cedar Rapids, the winds toppled thousands of trees, but the damage hit a corn crop just weeks before harvest. was particularly astonishing.

“It looked like someone came in with a machete and cut down all our corn,” Kelley said.

Or as Sorgenfrey, the Iowa farmer who was hit by the derecho, put it: “Most of my corn looked like it had been crushed.”

While Kelley is excited about the potential of short corn, she said farmers should be aware that ears that grow closer to the ground could be more vulnerable to disease or mold. Short plants could also be susceptible to a problem called lodging, when corn leans after a heavy rain, for example, and then grows low to the ground, Kelley said.

Brian Leake, a Bayer spokesman, said the company has been developing short corn for more than 20 years. Other companies such as Stine Seed and Corteva have also been working for a decade or more to come up with short corn varieties.

While the primary goal has been to develop corn that can withstand high winds, the researchers also note that a shorter stalk makes it easier for farmers to access fields with equipment for tasks such as spreading fungicides or seeding the soil with a future plant cover.

Bayer plans to ramp up production in 2027, and Leake said he hopes that by the end of this decade, farmers will be growing short-stem corn everywhere.

“We see the opportunity for this to become the new normal in the United States and other parts of the world,” he said.