Why is Bt corn so darn popular? Blame it on the economics, says a paper to be presented to the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association’s annual meeting in Virginia this month.
The paper, prepared by Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo and Seth Wechsler of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C., says that by 2011 Bt corn accounted for 65 per cent of U.S. corn acres. Observations in 19 corn-producing states in 2010 show that corn yields were 26 bushels per acre higher for adopters of that technology, compared to non-adopters.