By John Russell
Inside bright greenhouses at Dow AgroSciences' sprawling Northwestside
complex, corn plants grow tall and lush, with no signs of rootworms, corn
borers or other pests that munch away at crops and farmers' profits.The corn
is grown from biotech seeds that share genes from different types of corn to
produce a plant able to resist the toughest pests and weed killers.
Demand from farmers is brisk. To keep up, Dow is growing and
harvesting corn plants as fast as it can, even expanding into winter
production in Hawaii, Argentina and Chile.

"We're bulking up, but it will be another two or three years before we
can meet demand," said Thomas R. Wiltrout, global business leader for Dow's
plant genetics.

Already consumers are gobbling up genetically altered ingredients in
foods from chips to desserts, probably without realizing it, creating a $6
billion industry that shows no sign of slowing.

Dow is positioning itself to grab a bigger share. The company, better
known for its agricultural chemicals, is a small player in the corn seed
market, but wants to change that. Over the next three years, it wants to
produce a super seed with eight genetic traits to fight pests and weed
killers on multiple fronts, significantly more than the three traits now
available on genetically modified seeds.

It is teaming up with agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. to share genetic
traits now available only in products from one company or the other.

It's the latest step in the wave of genetically modified foods,
changing the way farmers grow crops and how consumers feed their families.

Supporters call genetically modified crops a biotechnology marvel that
helps farmers produce more food from America's shrinking farmland and help
feed the planet.

But critics call the crops "frankenfoods" - unnatural, scary, and
possibly dangerous to human health and biodiversity. They want more testing
and more regulations.

But love it or hate it, genetically engineered food is nearly
everywhere. Around the world, genetically modified crops wind up as
ingredients that go into thousands of processed foods, such as corn chips,
frozen pizza, chocolate pudding and packaged muffins.

Dow says the biotech crops are safe for human and animal health, and
do not pose any environmental threat. Some experts agree.

"We believe the currently marketed genetically engineered crops are
safe to eat, and have some benefits to the environment and farmers, and
Americans should embrace those," said Gregory Jaffe, who oversees biotech
issues for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy and
educational organization based in Washington.

Dow is counting on the eight-gene combination, called SmartStax, to
help it gain market share at the expense of larger competitors, including
Pioneer Hi-Bred, AgReliant Genetics and Syngenta.

But Dow needs to gain support worldwide to sell more of the biotech
seeds. While U.S. consumers are supporting biotech foods - or at least not
actively resisting them - Europeans are less willing to embrace such
products.

Some surveys show more than 70 percent of Europeans are against
biotech food. For years, many European countries banned the importation of
genetically altered foods. But just last week, the European Commission
approved Dow's biotech corn for use in animal feeds, for human consumption
and other uses. But it did not lift its ban against raising the crops in the
European Union.

Dow and Monsanto hope to launch their super seeds by 2010. The seeds
will represent a combination of traits from the two companies, such as Dow
Agro's insect-resistant Herculex and Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

As part of the process, plant scientists take the DNA from one
organism, modify it in a laboratory, and insert it into another organism.

"We've already developed our traits. Monsanto has already developed
theirs. So it's simply a matter of putting them together," Wiltrout said.

The benefit, according to Dow, is that a single corn plant can fight
off a wider range of pests in numerous ways.

"So it will be very difficult for the insects to win because they're
being attacked on multiple fronts," said Steven A. Thompson, head of Dow
Agro's research and development for global seeds and traits.

A growing number of farmers, in Indiana and around the U.S. are
rushing into biotech crops. Of the 6.5 million acres of corn grown in
Indiana this year, 59 percent is the biotech variety, up from 40 percent
last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Of the 4.7
million acres of soybeans grown in Indiana this year, 94 percent are
biotech, up from 92 percent last year.

Worldwide, the picture is much the same. Global acreage of biotech
crops more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, from 109 million acres to 252
million acres, according to the Biotechnology Industry Organization trade
group.
And it's producing huge bumper crops. In the United States, corn yield
per acre has doubled since the 1970s.

Even so, the market seems to have plenty of room to grow. Last month,
Monsanto predicted it could triple the amount of farming acres planted
worldwide with its genetically engineered seeds.

Michael Shuter, a corn and soybean farmer in Madison County, uses
biotech seeds and has seen the difference. He has grown biotech corn for
three years, now filling about 2,000 acres, as well as biotech soybeans for
10 years, now covering about 1,200 acres. He sells most of the crop for hog
and poultry feed.

"We get better control over pests and weeds. Our crops look very
good," Shuter said. He added that his crop yield has improved by up to 20
percent.
Americans buy plenty of biotech-derived foods. Seventy percent to 80
percent of all the processed food found in supermarkets, from canned peas to
frozen dinners, comes from biotech crops, food experts say.

Of course, many consumers might be buying biotech foods and not even
realizing it. A poll taken in 2000 found that 62 percent of Americans were
unaware that genetically modified foods were being sold, according to the
University of Michigan.

"It's buried in almost every food product that has a long list of
ingredients, many of the prepared and frozen foods," said Bruce Chassy,
professor of food safety at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
"But what we're eating are genetically modified ingredients. It's rare to
see 100 percent genetically modified food on the market."

That's not to say the biotech companies haven't tried. In 1994, the
first biotech crop to be approved by U.S. regulators was a high-tech tomato,
called the Flavr Savr, made by Calgene, following more than a decade of
research. Calgene scientists altered a gene on the tomato that caused
softening so that farmers could let the tomato stay on the vine a few
additional days, allowing for longer shelf life. But the tomato met with
mixed reviews and flopped in the market.

Other companies have spent millions of dollars to develop
virus-resistant sweet potatoes, tastier papayas and the like, but the market
remains small.
Some scientists say biotech crops encourage farmers to overuse
pesticides, which eventually lose their effectiveness. They say the overuse
creates super-resistant weeds that hurt the environment.

"There's an epidemic of weeds that are resistant to Monsanto's
Roundup," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food
Safety, a nonprofit public interest group in Washington. "In some cases,
farmers are applying 10 times the normal rate of Roundup, and it's still not
killing weeds it used to kill."

But Dow, Monsanto and other companies see it differently. When Dow
Agro rolled out its agreement last month, its president and chief executive,
Jerome A. Peribere, described the combined seeds as the "Rolls-Royce or the
Ferrari of the industry."


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