Association Perspectives

Has The Biotech Wheat Issue Turned A Corner?

Scranton, N.D. grower Bruce Freitag notes that after attending the recent Grain Congress, representing the annual meeting of the National Association of Wheat Growers and U.S. Wheat Associates, one gets the feeling that the issue of biotech wheat has turned a corner. 

Freitag, a past president of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association and a current member on the board of Growers For Biotechnology, says that in the past, biotech wheat was a major source of divisiveness amongst state and national wheat groups. But he says there’s a growing sense of realization that biotechnology will be needed for wheat to remain viable as a profitable crop in this country.

He says this was apparent throughout the discussions and presentations at the Grain Congress, and lists several examples:

K-State ag economist Barry Flinchbaugh, in the closing comments of a pre-conference media summit, said bluntly about biotech wheat: “If we don’t do it, we’re dead, because in the long-run, we can’t compete.”  The grain industry will need to find a way to handle biotech wheat, he said, just like they do other biotech crops like corn and soybeans.

Minnesota producer Art Brandli, gave a presentation before U.S. Wheat Associates that biotech wheat is our “do or die.”  That the gaps in competitiveness between wheat and soybeans/corn will increase as future biotech traits are incorporated into these other crops, such as drought tolerant corn/soybeans; nitrogen efficient corn; and higher yielding traits. He cited a survey of growers in northwest Minnesota about biotech wheat. Of 500 growers attending, 350 or 70% signed a letter of support for biotech wheat/scab resistant wheat, a “number expected to grow with more information and education.”

There was a joint resolution by NAWG and USW supporting Syngenta’s fusarium tolerance transgenic trait in wheat.  And Neal Fisher, administrator of the N.D. Wheat Commission, pointing out how Fusarium (scab)/DON lowers milling and baking quality, making the issue of biotech scab resistant wheat not only a grower/crop production issue, but an end-use product issue.

There was a presentation by Forrest Chumley, associate director for research at Kansas State University, entitled “The Scientific Cost of Not Pursuing GM Wheat.”  Chumley pointed out that in science, success is the best recruiting tool, and failure to commercialize biotech traits and a decline in wheat research investments leads to reduced student enrollments and lost research opportunities. Without biotech, Chumley speculated, “can we continue to attract the best and brightest to wheat research and education?”

These yield and acreage trends in Polk County, MN (northern Red River Valley) and Clay County, MN (southern Red River Valley) are a microcosm of trends occurring throughout the Northern Plains.  Corn and soybean research advancements keyed by biotechnology over the past 15 years have enabled more growers further north and further west to profitably grow these crops, siphoning wheat acreage.