SAN ANTONIO, Texas – American wheat farmers have a new reason to remember the Alamo.
In a hotel meeting room next door to the shrine commemorating Texas liberty, they took a stand that some growers feel could be a defining moment for the wheat industry, just as the Alamo is considered by many Americans to be a defining moment for Texas independence from Mexico.
“It’s do or die,” said Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council director Art Brandli.
In what he described as the industry’s last chance to remain competitive with crops like corn and soybeans, the U.S. Wheat Associates, a powerful export agency that has been reluctant to embrace genetically modified crops, passed a resolution to support the development of Syngenta’s fusarium tolerant transgenic wheat.
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“This is a huge turnaround in attitude in just a few years,” said Brandli, noting that the same group rejected Roundup Ready wheat back in 2000.
“I think we’ve made tremendous strides here approving the resolution dealing with Syngenta.”
In the past, USW has been at odds with the National Association of Wheat Growers on the biotechnology issue, advocating a more cautious approach to commercialization than the grower group wanted.
But Syngenta’s new wheat appears to have convinced USW to adopt a friendlier stance on the technology.
U.S. Wheat has also agreed to soften its stance on forcing technology providers to foot the entire bill for creating a system to segregate GM wheat from conventional wheat.
That concession paved the way for NAWG and USW to agree on a joint biotechnology position statement after three years of banging heads on the issue.
The statement calls for all segments of the industry to participate in the development of an identity preservation system for GM wheat.
Syngenta’s fusarium resistant wheat helped bring about the reconciliation because farmers recognize how important the trait could be for the industry, said Darrell Hanavan, chair of the joint USW/NAWG biotechnology committee.
“Farmers are more willing to embrace the technology now than they were five years ago,” he said.
In the preamble to the vote on the Syngenta resolution Hanavan told USW directors that the results of the company’s 2005 field trials were “very promising” but that the technology provider was at a crossroads.
Ever since growers on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border rejected Monsanto’s Roundup Ready wheat, biotechnology companies have become leery about investing in GM wheat.
Syngenta didn’t want to commit to another year of trials and go through regulatory approval for the crop in the U.S. and Canada until it received support from groups like U.S. Wheat.
Brandli was elated USW’s board of directors gave Syngenta a vote of confidence.
“This is a powerful message to Syngenta that a major marketing firm like U.S. Wheat is willing to stand up and say, ‘Yes, we want to have something like this.'”
In his presentation to the USW portion of the North American Grain Congress, he told delegates how wheat has been losing ground to corn and soybeans in his home state.
“It is remarkable. I’m serious when I say that in 14 years we’ve lost a million acres of wheat. A million acres.”
He said it boiled down to the fact that corn and soybeans are more economical to produce because of higher yields and better prices.
To change that, the wheat industry must start growing higher-yielding or lower-cost crops and Minnesota’s growers believe biotechnology can help, said Brandli.
Syngenta’s new wheat could change the economics because fusarium head blight is making it nearly impossible for wheat farmers in the U.S. Northern Great Plains to stay profitable, he added.
Between 1993 and 2001 scab damage cost American wheat growers $2.5 billion, 68 percent of that occurred in North Dakota and Minnesota.
“We need (fusarium-resistant wheat) in Minnesota,” said Brandli.
Hanavan said it will be important to move Syngenta’s fusarium tolerance trait through the regulatory hurdles arm-in-arm with Canada.
