01/10/06 Why wheat leader wants biotech wheat

Farm and Ranch January 10, 2006 Concerns about foreign market acceptability have stymied the commercialization of biotech, or GMO, wheat. But Sherman Reese, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, says wheat is losing out to other crops in the U.S like corn and soybeans, because of the advantages biotech has given those crops. And wheat could continue to lose economic and political clout because of it. Reese: "The other concern we have is we don't know exactly what our overseas competitors are doing. China is rumored to be hot on the trail of biotech transgenic wheat and as China is the largest wheat producer in the world, as the largest wheat consumer, anything they do in that realm could have a huge impact both for our us to market into their area as well their potential to export into our competing markets. So for those two reasons we think it essential wheat regain some competitive advantage by being allowed to use the same tools these other crops are enjoying." What are the possibilities of biotech? Reese sums up what he saw visiting a research facility. Reese: "Where they told us that they had the genes available to insert into almost any plant that would give the plant increased cold tolerance, increased heat tolerance, drought tolerance, enhanced fertilizer use, which would in and of itself, those four traits together could promise as much as a 40% increase in yield." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.