The Cornifcation of Western Canada — How Far a $100 Million Investment Will Take This Crop

Corn in July. Photo credit: Bernard Tobin, 2014

When Monsanto Canada recently announced it was moving one hundred million dollars into corn varietal and trait development for Western Canada’s very short season, there were likely more than a few people wondering why. After all, grain corn is a rather small part of the western Canadian crop mix, save for pockets here and there. But in a classic chicken-or-egg example, Monsanto asked the question, “What if we had 70 day corn?” and took another look at the Prairie crop mix. What they saw was as much as 10 million acres opening up to corn.

Check out all of Real Agriculture’s coverage of the Momentum Tour here!

In this interview with Dan Wright, trait development lead with Monsanto Canada, Shaun Haney asks why Monsanto chose now to go big into corn, how far $100 million goes in crop breeding, how farmers benefit and, perhaps what’s on many farmers’ minds, which crop stands to lose the most acres to the towering plant.

Want to see more on corn production in Western Canada? Follow this link!

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