VIEWPOINT: Extremists could spell end for wheat farming

Grand Forks HeraldGrace City, ND – I farm in the heart of one of the top wheat-producing states in the nation. But with the risk of scab and rising input costs and a wheat price parked in the $3 range, I question whether I can afford to produce this crop any longer.

We grew Granite and Briggs this year, which you might consider some of the higher-yielding, higher-performance “racehorse” spring wheat varieties available. We sprayed 95 percent of our wheat acreage with Folicur in a timely fashion. We did everything we were supposed to do to produce a decent wheat crop, and the potential was there for 65 to 70 bushel per acre yields.

But judging by the aborted spikelets, we lost about 20 percent of the crop to scab. Our average wheat yield was around 55 bushels per acre. The way I figure it, a loss of 10 to 15 bushels per acre on 3,000 acres at $3.40 is $102,000 to $153,000 in lost gross sales.

Then, there was vomitoxin associated with the scab, which I figure cost about 30 cents per bushel in quality discounts. On 3,000 acres, that`s $60,000. I spent about $42,000 on fungicide to try to prevent scab. But altogether, scab ended up costing me way more than $200,000 in 2005, and I know there are guys out there who had it worse.

And now, we`re facing $500-a-ton fertilizer and $3-a-gallon fuel to grow $3 wheat (before discounts) in 2006. It`s a risk scenario to put shivers down the spine of any ag lender.

The research community generally concludes that the only way to solve scab is through better genetics. And yet, here we are, a dozen years since the major scab epidemic hit the northern Plains in 1993, with only a few modest genetic improvements in spring wheat and little headway in durum and barley.

If scab and input costs end up killing the U.S. wheat production sector, let anti-biotech extremists be the pallbearers. Public and private biotech approaches toward scab research quietly continue today. But the effort as a whole has been stymied by a few Chicken Littles who have squawked about the cost of testing and segregating biotech wheat or losing export sales to a few buyers who don`t want biotech wheat.

But guess what, folks: There are grain elevators out there being forced to allocate resources toward testing and segregating wheat for vomitoxin. And it`s feasible we could lose both domestic and export sales due to vomitoxin. This is what happened in the southeast United States a few years ago, when major food companies and even livestock feeders stopped sourcing soft red wheat from mid-Atlantic states, because of food and feed safety concerns stemming from scab/vomitoxin in wheat.

So, here we have scab/vomitoxin, a real, proven threat that continues to stymie the wheat industry across the country. But if a new biotech wheat variety resistant to scab were to be released today, extremists likely would find some reason to oppose it.

The wheat industry shouldn`t stand for this, letting a minority of anti-biotech views to stifle wheat R&D progress. The more people who quit growing wheat, the less quantity and quality of supply to source from. Eventually, it could dwindle to a supply that becomes unreliable for buyers.

Inconceivable? Hardly. A soul-searching editorial (“The unimaginable becomes the possible for wheat”) last March in Milling & Baking News focused on this very topic.

The editorial lamented about what we already know – that biotech advances in corn and soybeans, absent in wheat, is threatening the future supply of grain-based foods.

“Research aimed at increasing yields, including a revival in bioengineered varieties, appears in everyone`s best interest,” the editorial concluded. They`re right on the mark.

Here on my farm, soil test results point to corn, soybeans, or flax as options to consider in 2006. Wheat just doesn`t pencil out.

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