Western Producer reporter Sean Pratt recently attended a gathering of American wheat, corn and soybean growers in Florida and filed these reports.
TAMPA, Fla. – Now that America’s two main wheat groups are on the same page regarding GM wheat, it is time to start spreading the gospel, say senior representatives from both organizations.
U.S. Wheat Associates and the National Association of Wheat Growers, or NAWG, are meeting with their counterparts in other major exporting regions like Canada and Australia to get them in agreement with commercializing GM wheat so the industry can present a united front to the world.
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“We’re all going to try to commercialize traits at the same time,” said Daren Coppock, chief executive officer of NAWG.
U.S. Wheat Associates passed a motion reflecting that same sentiment at the 2007 Commodity Classic conference, an annual gathering of the U.S. corn, soybean and wheat industries.
Association president Alan Tracy said all major wheat exporters will eventually adopt GM wheat.
“It’s not in anybody’s interest if one country holds back and then tries to use it as a marketing ploy,” he said.
It wasn’t long ago that U.S. Wheat, the export and promotion arm of the American wheat industry, was advocating a more cautious approach to commercialization.
The group didn’t want to jeopardize sales in sensitive markets like Japan by adopting an aggressive commercialization stance.
But last year the two groups signed a biotechnology position statement that paves the way for the commercialization of GM wheat.
One of the principles in the document assures the delivery of non-GM wheat within reasonable tolerance levels to markets that require it.
The document also contains a resolution supporting the continued research and development of Syngenta’s fusarium tolerant wheat.
Coppock said Syngenta’s product is “the only GM wheat in town.”
The company has proven its product delivers a yield boost and significantly reduces levels of deoxynivalentol, or DON, which is a quality-limiting side effect of fusarium head blight. It is now focusing its effort on the market acceptance issue rather than laboratory work.
Coppock said the U.S. wheat industry needs a product like Syngenta’s GM wheat if it has any chance of competing with corn and soybeans for acreage.
Canadian growers would also benefit from the release of a fusarium tolerant wheat because they are wrestling with the same disease, he noted.
The Canadian Wheat Board was one of the groups that led the charge against Monsanto’s Roundup Ready wheat, a project that was voluntarily shelved by the chemical company on May 10, 2004.
The CWB said it couldn’t support Monsanto’s product because customers didn’t want it, but it recognizes the potential benefits biotechnology could provide to consumers and Canadian wheat and barley farmers.
However, the board has drafted a biotechnology position statement that reads a little different than the one adopted by the American wheat groups.
Instead of saying it supports the commercialization of GM wheat under a certain set of circumstances, the CWB said it opposes the unconfined release of GM wheat in Canada unless stringent conditions can be met.
Those conditions include widespread market acceptance, achievable tolerance levels, an effective segregation system, rapid, accurate and inexpensive detection technology and a positive cost-benefit analysis throughout the entire value chain, with a particular emphasis on farmer income.
