Biotech corn,
soybeans encroaching on wheat acres
By ROXANA HEGEMAN
The Associated Press
Monday,
Corn and soybeans varieties whose transgenic traits allow
them to adapt to drier climates are making those crops more competitive for
farmers to grow than wheat.
Not only has biotechnology moved those crops west, but it
has boosted their yields, said Dusti Fritz, chief
executive officer for Kansas Wheat, a cooperative venture of the Kansas Wheat
Commission and the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers.
"It is in climates that had never seen production of
those crops before," Fritz said. "That is true not only in Kansas,
but if you think about the line of states from Texas all the way into North
Dakota and Canada, it is true throughout that productive belt."
Irrigated corn acres are now common in western
Some of the new varieties of biotech corn, for example,
reportedly can grow with 50 percent less water, dramatically reducing costs for
irrigation, Fritz said.
Corn generally costs more than wheat to grow because it
needs more water and its seed is more expensive, but biotechnology is closing
that gap at a time when wheat production costs are rising rapidly.
The Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service
calculated the average cost to produce one metric ton of wheat was $6.93 per
bushel in 2007 and $7.31 per bushel in 2008. The predicted average cost of
production in 2009 is $8.10 per bushel.
In
While the trend away from wheat acres can be traced back to
1996, when changes in federal farm programs gave farmers more flexibility in
their planting decisions, the latest biotechnology developments in corn and
soybeans have accelerated the shift as those crops become more profitable. But
there is no commercially available transgenic wheat in the market right now,
she said.
Transgenic wheat has met with resistance from consumers both
domestically and internationally, but Fritz believes advances in science and
changing consumer attitudes may make biotech wheat commercially available in
three to five years.
"The wheat industry is proactively working on this. It
is a priority for wheat to have access to biotechnology," Fritz said.
"There are a number of efforts ongoing by national and state wheat groups
on this. Everybody is working together with other industry to make sure that it
happens."
Farmers say their top priorities for transgenic wheat
varieties would be drought resistance and enhancements in nutrient use by the
plants.
"This competitiveness of transgenic crops is a key
reason why we expect to see continued erosion in wheat acreage in the
U.S.," John Oades, president and director of the
West Coast office of U.S. Wheat Associates, said in a news release. "It is
also a fundamental reason why
___
On the Net:
washingtonpost.com