Farmer Starts Seed Company

Farmer Starts Seed Company CROPS New Crops 27-2-3 Why buy high priced seed corn when you can breed it yourself? Doug Gunnink didn't really know how to do that, and he didn't have a million dollar research budget, but he somehow did it anyway. The Gaylord, Minnesota farmer not only bred his own line of varietal silage corn, but he thinks he did a better job than the big guys with the deep pockets and PHD's. "Five years ago, I wrote an editorial on GMO corn and how people all over the world didn't want it," says Gunnink, an advocate of intensive grazing and sustainable farming. "I started looking at producing organic seed corn and saw some of the royalties companies were getting. I've been a Holstein breeder all my life and thought, what if I started putting those energies into silage corn." After four years, Gunnink had produced a silage corn variety that he has named Royal. The new line began with some public lines of corn obtained from a USDA corn breeder located at Ames, Iowa. Gunnink identified some high protein and high yield lines. He planted two varieties with desirable characteristics, but from different populations, together in the same field. He then selected out of this crossbred population for standability and dry down. The result is a varietal cross, as opposed to a hybrid cross. It's simply the result of a cross between two open-pollinated varieties, so you can't replant the seed and get the same cross. You have to buy the seed from Gunnink. He shoots for a 58-lb. test weight and tries to maintain a protein level of about 10.5 percent. Protein levels ran from 9.8 to 10.5 percent this past growing season. Neighbors that have the new line report 26 to 27-ton per acre yields. He treats his seed with Soil Restore, an innoculant that he says stimulates beneficial mycorrhiza and tricaderma fungi in the soil by 6 to 10 times. He credits the more active fungi for making minerals in the soil more available for plant use, thereby increasing yields and raising protein and feed values, as well as reducing plant disease. To get an independent evaluation of his new line, Gunnink sent Royal off to research trials in Arizona. The results verified his trials, yielding 34.89 tons of silage per acre when planted at 22,500 (innoculated) seeds per acre. The new silage corn variety tested at 10.5% crude protein and only 17.9% starch compared to 28.8% starch with other varieties and was valued at $40.39 per ton, returning more than $1,400 per acre. "It's exciting to see the results come back so very good," says Gunnink. "We are starting to see that it has terrific potential." For the near term, Gunnink plans to sell Royal direct ($48 per bag - limited quantities available), along with an open-pollinated silage variety. He also raises and sells grass seed selected for intensive grazing and distributes grazing grass seed marketed by a Dutch company. Contact: Douglas Gunnink, Graziers Supply & Management, 25303 461 Ave., Gaylord, Minn. 55334 (ph 507 237-5162).

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