05/18/06 Providing corn seed, part two

There are ten to 15 thousand acres of sweet corn in southwestern Idaho grown each year just for seed. The five major seed companies in Canyon County have seen a dramatic change in the past several years says Crookham Seed vice president Terry Clinton. CLINTON "Our growers are either selling their land because of developers offering exorbitant amounts of money for their land or we're losing it because we can't isolate our crop." Clinton says it's imperative that sweet corn seed be isolated and until the booming growth around Nampa that wasn't a problem. Corn seed growers used to be confined to a 50 mile circle around Crookham's Caldwell processing plant. CLINTON "We are expanding up into Payette County, we're looking at Emmett. We're looking over at Grandview. We're also growing some crops now over in Oregon, in Malheur County." Growers will also have to transport that seed into Caldwell and that's why Crookham last year invested one million dollars in new trailers. CLINTON "What that does is we get more crop in because we went to larger transport vehicles." And one other potential problem Clinton sees. His growers are aging, their children aren't farming and land is being sold off. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott