01/11/06 U.S. Wheat Associates and biotech

01/11/06 U.S. Wheat Associates and biotech

Farm and Ranch January 11, 2006 For the export market development arm of the U.S. wheat industry, U. S. Wheat Associates, biotech, transgenic or GMO wheat is a marketing problem. Biotech wheat is not yet commercialized but if it does become so in the U.S., important U.S. customers in Asia like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan say flat out they won't buy U.S. wheat. Alan Tracy is president of U.S. Wheat Associates. Tracy: "There is no question that when biotech wheat is introduced in the United States we are going to have some market disruption and market displacement. Fortunately we have some time before that takes place and what we view our job is to try and reduce that disruption as much as we can through education of our buyers and hard work with foreign government with tolerance levels and other such things." Tracy says meeting a tolerance level for GMO wheat in non-GMO wheat shipments would probably be easy early on because of limited acreage. Then as GMO wheat becomes dominant, non-GMO wheat will become a specialty crop. Tracy: "The shippers tells us that if they are given a few percentage to deal with that is not so problematic. When you start getting into a fraction of a percent as some countries have proposed, Europe has proposed point-nine percent, that is going to be tough to meet at some stages." The marketing issue has kept GMO wheat on the shelf and in the U.S. wheat is losing acreage to other crops that are benefiting from modern biotechnology. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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