NAWG President:
“Time to Move Forward with Biotech Wheat”

National Association of Wheat Growers president Sherman Reese, a wheat grower from Oregon, spoke of the NAWG’s support in the development of biotech wheat. While there is Clearfield® (“imi” herbicide-tolerant) wheat varieties grown in the U.S., these varieties are developed through natural crossbreeding. There are currently no genetically-engineered wheat varieties grown in the U.S., although there is some public and private research on biotech wheat, including scab resistance, in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

Reese has outlined his and the NAWG’s support of biotech wheat R&D in his “NAWG Blog” writings on the NAWG web site, www.wheatworld.org :

“It’s time to move forward and get a biotech wheat variety developed for commercialization within the United States! And yes, I know those are ‘fighting words’ for many growers who come from highly export-dependent states, as I do. Yet, let’s look at the situation: wheat acres are declining (500,000 acres lost in 2004 in North Dakota alone), foreign competition increasing (in the countries of the FSU, for example), competition from other biotech crops, a crumbling infrastructure for storage, handling and shipping, a flat national yield trend line, rising input costs, and, not the least, an increasingly demoralized wheat farming community (especially among the younger farmers).

“How are we to counteract these trends? Will we, as an organization and an industry, simply sit back and let these trends engulf us? No! We cannot, and we will not!

“One of the answers, I believe, is to develop a biotech wheat variety(s), as soon as possible, with enough traits that will both lower our cost of production, and provide our customers, both domestic and foreign, with the type of end use product they desire.

I think this course of action may represent the U.S. wheat industry’s last, best hope.

What do YOU think?”

Biotech Crop: Pros & Cons

The major reasons why farmers grow biotech crops, and their major concerns (Source: NDSU extension agronomist Duane Berglund)

Benefits

Easy to use

Full spectrum weed control

No carryover residues (Liberty or Roundup)

Environmentally safe

Excellent crop safety

Wide application window (crop stages & weed stages)

Control of larger weeds

Allowance for rescue weed control

Reduced production cost

Concerns

Spray drift - non-target crops

Multiple applications may be required

Misapplication to non-resistant crop varieties

Premium price for seed

Short rotations resulting in added disease/insect problems

Public non-acceptance of genetically altered crops

Pollen movement to organically grown crops

Resistant weed species (expected in the future)

Resistant volunteers to control

Traceability in the Soybean Industry

Process Verification

From Farm to Plate: The Chain of Food Traceability

Gary Biel, president and CEO of the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association, says there are a number of factors driving production agriculture to product and process-based traceability, including market demand to government traceability mandates in Europe, and identity-preserved/segregated marketing of organic and biotech crops.

Traceability – the ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or farm commodity through all stages of production and distribution – helps assure food safety, increases the ability to react to inferior product performance, helps manage and minimize business liability, and as a means of early detection and rapid response to terrorism, however remote the risks may be.

This model illustrates the necessary components of traceability:

1. A logical chain of events that can be connected
2. Process Management - A process that can be managed and supply credible information
3. Process Verification - Credible independent verification of the process

Biel points out that for producers, the additional costs of traceability may be rewarded by a better price through product differentiation, and more efficient production via process management procedures.