By Carey Gillam
The time is right for a renewed push for biotech wheat, leading U.S.
wheat industry players said this week, as tight world wheat supplies and
high prices underscore strong global demand for the key food crop.
"We in the wheat industry are wanting to re-engage. We sure see the
need for that technology," said Joseph Kejr, chairman of the joint
biotechnology committee of the National Association of Wheat Growers and
U.S. Wheat Associates, which markets U.S. wheat to the world.



"The technology has been good for other commodities, cheapening
production and increasing yields," Kejr said. "We need to be able to hurry
up the process for wheat."



U.S. wheat prices have soared to historic high levels in the past few
weeks, with futures prices nearing $10 a bushel, up from about $4.50 a year
ago. The price hike is tied to crop shortfalls in many key producing
nations, which has triggered a scramble around the world for adequate
supplies of the bread-making grain.



Wheat industry players say they have warned for years that wheat acres
were in decline because a lack of technology to deal with troubling weather,
weeds and disease. And years of reluctance by wheat buyers to embrace
genetically modified wheat has made any immediate help impossible, say
technology providers.



There are still many hurdles to acceptance of biotech wheat, but
industry leaders expressed fresh hope that the current squeeze can generate
acceptance for gene technology that could make wheat more profitable for
farmers to grow and thus more plentiful.



"Maybe the world will be more accepting of biotech wheat now," said
Darrell Hanavan, executive director of the Colorado Wheat Growers
Association and past chairman of the biotech wheat committee. "The world
situation is very tight."



The U.S. Agriculture Department on Oct. 12 projected that global wheat
stocks would fall to 32-year lows by the end of the 2007/08 marketing year,
at 107 million tonnes. U.S. wheat ending stocks for 2007/08 were projected
at 307 million bushels, the lowest since 1948/49.



"The market is getting what it had coming," said Allan Skogen, a North
Dakota farmer and biotech proponent.



The U.S. wheat industry was sharply divided five years ago over
Monsanto Co's (MON.N: Quote, Profile, Research) efforts to commercialize a
GMO wheat that tolerated treatments of its Roundup herbicide.



Key foreign wheat trading partners and many domestic food companies
warned they would not buy biotech wheat because of consumer health and
safety concerns, and Monsanto ultimately shelved its biotech wheat plans in
2004.



Since then any advancement in biotech wheat has been sluggish at best.
Monsanto competitor Syngenta (SYNN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research) has in its
pipeline a spring wheat that is resistant to fusarium disease.



But Syngenta spokeswoman Anne Burt said the wheat was "not on a
commercial path" at this point and Syngenta was focused on achieving market
acceptance.



Many wheat players were looking toward Australia, where BASF (BASF.DE:
Quote, Profile, Research) was in the early stages of researching
drought-resistant wheat varieties. But that project is likely several years
from commercialization as well.



"It's moving forward, but we're not in a position where anything is at
the point where we're talking about commercialization," said BASF
spokeswoman Fran Castle.



Indeed, it will likely take cooperation between Australia, Canada and
the United States, all major world wheat suppliers, to achieve biotech wheat
acceptance and commercialization, said National Association of Wheat Growers
CEO Daren Coppock.


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