He Says Gees Don't Like Roundup Ready Beans

He Says Gees Don't Like Roundup Ready Beans CROPS New Crops 24-5-5 Veteran farm writer C.F. Marley, who's been covering "everything ag" in Illinois for more than 50 years and is still on the road nearly every day, recently called to tell us about an unusual situation he had just observed. It seems he was visiting a farm near his home base of Nokomis, Ill. The farmer asked Marley to take a look at a 50-acre field of beans that was situated near a pond. What Marley saw amazed him. Two varieties of beans were planted in adjoining plots û one with Roundup Ready beans and the other with conventional beans. The Roundup beans were higher than Marley's waist when he visited while the conventional beans in the adjoining field were still just ankle high. The farmer explained that a flock of geese who live on the pond had been grazing on the beans all summer. But they wouldn't touch the Roundup Ready beans. All they would eat was the conventional beans, which resulted in a distinct line marking the boundary between the two crops. "I've never seen anything like it. What's amazing is that the field with Round Ready beans had been planted to conventional beans the previous year, and the geese ate them. This year, they won't go near that field," says Marley, who told us the farmer who owned the bean field did not want his name used. Marley says anyone who wants more information can call him at 217-563-2588. The report from Illinois comes on the heels of a new research report out of Iowa State University which reportedly confirms some of the data in earlier research concerning damage to Monarch butterflies exposed to pollen from genetically-modified corn.

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