I read this in our local farmer's paper and thought I would pass it on FYI.

Iowa Company Sells Open Pollinated Seed Corn The Farmer’s Exchange (northern Indiana) Friday, Aug. 24, 2001 Des Moines Register Laura Krouse remembers being fascinated with the open pollinated corn grown on the Neal family's farm, near Mount Vernon, Iowa. "I'd never seen corn that looked like that," Krouse said. "It was so unique." In 1988 Krouse bought 70 acres of the farm and the seed business the Neal family had developed since 1903, when Burt Neal bought kernels from the world champion ear of corn at the World Corn Exposition in Chicago. Krouse now sells the seed corn grown on six acres at Abbe Hills Open Pollinated Seed Corn. Half her income comes from the sale of the seed. During the school year, she teaches biology at nearby Cornell College. "I thought I could make the farm payments by selling open pollinated seed corn," Krouse said. "It was pretty interesting to work with and I've met some pretty interesting people." Krouse said she knows of only three companies that sell open pollinated seed corn in the United States. In addition to hers, one company is in Ohio, the other in Illinois. Hybrid seed supplanted open pollinated seed corn in the United States 70 years ago. Since the end of World War II, hybrid seed corn has spread over most of the developed world. Hybrid seed corn typically has higher yields and is more uniform in height, ear placement and other traits that make it better for machine-harvesting. Unlike open pollinated seed corn, a hybrid seed can't be saved and planted again without losing as much as a third of its yield. Hybrid seed corn has spawned a huge commercial industry dominated by multi-national corporations. Old fashioned open pollinated seed corn would have disappeared if not for a few seed preservationists like Krouse and the Neal family, who continued to propagate and sell Neal's Yellow Dent for three generations. Krouse ' s background provided little preparation for taking over a seed corn business. After graduating from Iowa State University with a degree in agronomy, Krouse decided to work with wheat in Kansas. She left agriculture in 1981 and ran an emergency services center in southwest Florida that catered to migrant farm workers and the homeless. She then returned to college in 1985 to earn an advanced degree in agronomy from the University of Florida. Krouse was preparing to go to Honduras in 1988 to work with refugees from the civil war in El Salvador when her mother called and told her 70 acres was for sale near Mount Vernon. The old time corn being grown on the farm sealed the deal. Krouse purchased the farm and started raising and selling open pollinated corn seed. "I went to college and graduate school for seven years, and never was taught a thing about open pollinated corn," said Krouse. "It turns out, there are a lot of farmers fiddling around with it, developing their own varieties." Krouse said most of her customers are organic farmers who want to grow corn that hasn't been genetically modified, as many hybrid corn lines are to resist pests and herbicides. Also some livestock producers, especially organic dairies, like the higher protein and oil content that many open-pollinated corn lines contain, she said. Open pollinated corn tends to have weaker stalks than hybrids do. That's both good and bad. Weaker stalks make for better feed if all of the corn plant is chopped and fed to livestock as silage. The bad part is that weaker stalks are more likely to fall over in high winds, a trait known as lodging. Kendall Lamkey, a research geneticist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, has studied open pollinated corn on an Iowa State research farm. Less than I percent of the corn planted in the U.S. is open pollinated, Lamkey said. "Four years ago, I got a call from a farmer in southwest Iowa who wanted to plant open pollinated corn," Lamkey said. "I was shocked. I didn't think any one was interested in open pollinated corn." Since then, Lamkey has decided to focus his research on open pollinated corn to help farmers realize they have options other than hybrid corn. Interest in open pollinated corn appears to be growing, Lamkey said, because the seed usually costs less and needs less fertilizer and other chemicals. "Farmers are realizing that high yields don't always mean high profits," Lamkey said. Krouse said she enjoys the challenge of selecting the best seed from her open pollinated corn. "It's fun" she said. "Every ear and every corn plant is unique." Krouse selects her corn for a variety of desirable traits much like countless generations of Mesoamerican farmers who, over 5,000 years or more of genetic selection, transformed a native grass called teosinte into the crop we know as maize, or corn. Krouse said she selects first and foremost for disease resistance. Stalk strength to prevent lodging and higher yields also are traits Krouse seeks. Seed selection is a "family" matter. From 600 plants, Krouse picks the best 80 plants and takes 25 kernels from each of those plants. Those 25 kernels are planted together in "family plots," and the 10 best "families" grown from those kernels are selected for replanting the next year. Corn breeders have told Krouse that growing and selecting open pollinated corn in families is the best way to multiply the traits she seeks. Rejected corn gets sold for feed or fed to Krouse's chickens. Krouse sells her open pollinated seed corn for $35 a bushel to customers all over the United States, but most sales go to farmers in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. Last year she sold some seed to a farmer in Siberia who wanted to see if the corn would grow in the short summer season there. Because of his isolated location, the farmer in Siberia wanted to buy open pollinated corn so he wouldn’t have to buy new seed every year. Along with teaching and running the seed company, Krouse also grows a four acre garden that provides vegetables for 60 families in the area. Most of her garden vegetables also come from old fashioned varieties. “people just love them,” she said. At Abbe Hills Open Pollinated Seed Corn, everything old is new again.

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), August 25, 2001

Answers

I am so sorry the paragraphs did not show up.

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), August 25, 2001.

A man called Leonard Borries, in southern IL, also sells open- pollinated seed corn. My son wanted to plant corn on his 15 acres this year, but didn't want to spend $80 to $150 a bag for the hybrids, and we found Mr. Borries name in a small magazine.

All that he had was a late maturing type, I believe he said it was developed in the late 1800's. My son ordered it late and put on no fertilizer or herbicides, but it has come up beautifully, and should give a good crop. In fact, most of the heavily-fertilized hybrid corn around here is very bad because of drought, and isn't producing at all, but some of the open-pollinated corn my son planted has stalks 15' high; the drought didn't bother it at all. It didn't go right to tasseling at 4' because of stress, like a lot of the hybrid stuff. It's tasseled now and forming good ears, and a lot of the farmers around are asking him what kind of corn he has. Tragically, none of the farmers around here even know what open-pollinated means!!! What a sorry state of affairs.....to have to be dependent on the government, and the chemical/seed companies.....

-- Bonnie (chilton@stateline-isp.com), August 25, 2001.

A farmer who doesn't know what open pollinated means doesn't deserve to be called farmer!

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), August 25, 2001.

Thanks for posting the article, got any idea what the address is?

-- Stephanie Nosacek (possumliving@go.com), August 29, 2001.