Genetically modified wheat would not solve the problems plaguing the wheat industry in the United States.
In fact, says a recently released study, the introduction of GM wheat would make things worse, putting at risk up to half of U.S. wheat export markets and driving down prices by as much 33 percent.
The report by Iowa State University agricultural economist Robert Wisner is an updated version of a similar study he did in 2003 for the Montana-based Western Organization of Resource Councils.
That study found strong opposition to GM wheat among overseas buyers, and Wisner says there’s no reason to believe those attitudes have changed.
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“We have not seen evidence, either from World Trade Organization policy or other developments, that consumers in major foreign markets are changing their views toward GM wheat so as to make such varieties acceptable in international markets,” he wrote in the 2006 update.
He added that a GM wheat variety with resistance to fusarium head blight now being developed by Syngenta is likely to find the same resistance as did Monsanto’s Roundup Ready wheat.
Some U.S. wheat groups said that the wheat industry’s reluctance to embrace GM technology is a major factor in the steady decline in wheat acreage in recent years.
They say farmers are switching to high-yielding GM varieties of corn and soybeans, while wheat lags behind in yield and profitability.
However, Wisner identified a number of other factors contributing to a reduction in wheat acreage, including U.S. domestic farm policies and price supports that favour soybeans and corn over wheat, growing demand for corn and soybeans from the burgeoning ethanol and biodiesel industries and new competition in export markets from countries near the Black Sea.
He also said the bottom line in business is that the customer is always right, and regardless of whether fears about GM crops are legitimate, the wheat industry would be foolish to ignore consumer demand.
Todd Leake, a farmer from Emerado, North Dakota, and member of the Dakota Resource Council, which helped sponsor the study, said introducing GM wheat would have disastrous consequences for farmers.
“Wheat acres would fall if we had GM wheat because we wouldn’t be able to export and without exports we’d certainly see domestic prices decline,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a viable crop.”
Leake dismissed the need for a fusarium resistant GM wheat, saying a number of traditional varieties released in recent years, including Alsen, Glenn and Howard, offer improved resistance and the disease is no longer a big issue.
“They haven’t come up with anything better than Alsen through GM, so why put markets at risk,” he said.
Leake said those risks were made clear by a recent incident in which traces of GM Liberty Link rice were detected in U.S. commercial supplies, prompting Japan to immediately suspend imports and the European Union to institute mandatory testing of all imports.
