Legal decision bitter news for sugar beet growers

Sugar beets genetically modified to be resistant to a popular herbicide now account for 95 percent of the nation’s crop. Farmer Alan Welp calls it one of the most rapidly adopted technologies in the history of agriculture.

The future use of that technology was thrown into uncertainty last week, when a federal judge revoked the government’s approval of the beets until regulators complete a more thorough review of how the scientifically engineered crop affects the environment and other plants.

Biotech beets are already planted on more than 1 million acres spanning 10 states from Michigan to Oregon, including Colorado and Wyoming. Any biotech beets already planted will be harvested this fall and processed, but any additional plantings will be regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service until completion of an environmental impact statement, an extensive examination expected to take at least two or three years.

The judge stopped short of imposing a permanent ban on the biotech beets, which Monsanto developed to resist its popular Roundup weed killer.

Welp, who is an ex-officio board member of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association as well as one of roughly 300 shareholders in Colorado-based Western Sugar Cooperative and a diversified farmer with 500 acres of beets, says Roundup ready technology has been a boon to a struggling industry. Last year was a banner year for the crop, with around 40,000 acres of sugar beets harvested in Colorado generating revenues of around $3 million.

While last year’s weather was favorable, new herbicide tolerance traits and seed treatment technologies were also credited with the boost in yields and profitability.

By cell phone from one of the fields where he was spot spraying, Welp explained why Roundup Ready technology was so eagerly embraced.
“It eliminated a lot of other herbicides we were using,” Welp said. “Instead of making herbicide applications four or five times, we could reduce that to once or twice. It reduced the amount of hand labor. Our yields have really increased in the last three years.”

Asked about the potential impact of the judge’s ruling on future seed availability, he said, “That’s a very good question, and nobody knows the answer.”
The decision also raises supply concerns for the U.S. food and beverage industry. Sugar beets account for about half of all U.S. sugar.
It’s possible that growers will be allowed to grow the biotech beets on an interim basis while the study is completed. The judge passed regulatory authority back to APHIS. “It’s all in their hands,” Welp said. “As an industry, we’ll be talking with them in the next couple of weeks. What we need to do right now is have patience and let APHIS work through this and work with them to move things forward.”

Organic farmers, food safety advocates and conservation groups fear genetically altered sugar beets could contaminate the genes of conventionally grown food, such as chard and table beets. Cross-pollination between crops could deny other farmers the right to grow and market GMO-free products.

Those arguments helped persuade another federal judge in San Francisco to halt the planting of genetically altered alfalfa seeds in 2007 pending a full environmental review that still hasn’t been completed.

That case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the injunction but left the ban in place.

Welp admits to being “very frustrated” with the decision and sees it as part of a bigger setback for ag producers. “This whole situation increases the difficulty and the expense, and ultimately it’s the grower who pays for bringing new technology on board,” he said. “All the rules and regulations we have in America is something we have to live with, but it comes down to a matter of economics. Can our companies afford to develop new technology?”