A mournful air hung over wheat at the annual meeting of the Canada Grains Council.
Regardless of last summer’s sky-high prices and the huge world crop produced in 2008, grain company executives, scientists and farmers repeatedly noted the eclipse of once-King Wheat by corn and soybeans.
“Wheat is still a very important crop to western Canadian farmers and it just seems like we’ve neglected it. It’s the poor cousin,” said southeastern Saskatchewan farmer Wayne Truman after hearing presentations by American and Australian wheat industry experts about beefed-up research and breeding in those countries.
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“It’s such an important crop that we need to put the research dollars into it to match the (soy)beans and the corn. They’ve gotten so far ahead.”
But North Dakota State University economist and wheat industry expert Bill Wilson, one of the presenters, said nothing to cheer Truman about wheat’s future.
“It will continue a process of rationalizing itself downwards and that means the industry has got to get used to operating with fewer acres, it’s got to get used to operating with smaller stocks, and this will change how the business operates compared to 10 or 20 years ago, when it was a much bigger crop,” Wilson said.
Not only have corn and soybeans stolen millions of acres of prime wheat growing territory, but breeding advancements in those crops aren’t likely to slow down or allow wheat breeding to catch up.
“I suspect we will have difficulty, in part, because of the complexity of breeding, in part because of the change in geography and in part because of the amount of money spent on crops other than wheat,” Wilson said.
Hybrid breeding of soybeans and corn has allowed seed breeding companies to protect their investments, something much more challenging in wheat.
As well, the decision not to grow genetically modified wheat has closed the research door for most companies, leaving those with already-developed GM wheat technology nursing costly wounds.
Syngenta senior executive David Morgan had earlier bewailed the situation of GM wheat, noting his company had valuable wheat advancements such as fusarium-resistant wheat sitting “in the fridge,” but bans keep them out of farmers’ hands.
Wilson said wheat acreage in Canada and the United States has suffered double-digit percentage losses in recent years. Partly in response, farmers in a number of U.S. states have increased their crop research funding through mechanisms such as checkoffs.
Truman said he is worried about wheat’s future because most Canadian farmers can’t switch to corn and soybeans the way American farmers can, leaving them with fewer choices.
“Farmers are neglecting to grow it because the potential isn’t there,” he said. “We need it as an option.”
