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Cooperation on GM wheat
Posted: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 2:35 pm
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For many years, the international wheat market has been dominated by three major competitors; the United States, Canada and Australia. The High Plains Journal says a recent announcement by the major wheat organizations of all three countries, though, has put those rivalries on a backburner, if only for a moment.

The three countries announced their grower groups will work toward a synchronized commercialization of biotech traits in wheat, in order to minimize market disruption. While there is no commercial production of GM wheat anywhere, the statement of this goal brings the prospect of its cultivation much nearer.

There are some intense economic pressures to commercialize GM wheat. As Jennifer M. Latzke explains:
Despite a slow economy and rising prices, demand for wheat products continues to rise. The US Department of Agriculture has predicted wheat stocks in the United States to decrease by 40 percent by this June. However, wheat yields have remained stagnant and both public and private research--historically vital to advancements in wheat--is being set aside in some instances for more lucrative research into biotech crops.

That increasing competition from biotech crops, such as corn and soybeans, has also reduced the acres devoted to wheat production all across the country. Farmers can bring in more net return on the same acres with biotech corn and soybeans than they can with non-biotech wheat.
The activists like to ask if GM "will feed the world". The answer is, increasingly, that non-GM doesn't.
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GMO (noun) 1. An acronym for the term, 'Genetically Modified Organism'. 2. A plant, animal or microbe with a genetic code which has been intentionally altered, such as through forced evolution (see selective breeding); through random mutations induced with radiation or chemicals (see mutagenesis); or through the selective transfer, promoting or silencing of specific genes (see genetic engineering). 3. Most generally, any descendant of a primordial urbiote. (See evolution.)

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