Special Report

Wheat Growers aren’t wavering on GMOs

Although the anti-GMO crowd has been making a lot of noise in recent months, the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) is not backing off on its efforts to have biotechnology traits incorporated into wheat.

von bergen-bing-pic“The wheat industry supports of the introduction of biotechnology in wheat,” says Bing Von Bergen, president of NAWG. “We can’t be afraid of technology.  We believe it’s necessary for us to feed the world.  We need to keep moving forward to keep wheat competitive with the other commodities.”

Von Bergen, who farms near the town of Moccasin in central Montana, says GMO wheat is still years away.

“We’ve said for five years now, ‘we’re ten years away’—and we’re still ten years away,” he says. “It’s a complicated process.  We’ve got to get our trading partners overseas to understand the necessity of it.  Our export markets have to be willing to accept it.

“Probably our biggest challenge is we’ve got to get a tolerance that acceptable worldwide.  And we’ve got to start with the nation—we’ve got to get a tolerance level that’s acceptable.”

We visited with Von Bergen at Commodity Classic in San Antonio.

AUDIO: Bing Von Bergen (5:30 MP3)

  • GMO wheat is the quickest way to make wheat a specialty crop in the US. Without exports wheat will no longer be economically viable crop.

  • Daniel, that hasn’t been the case with GMO corn and soybeans. Those crops are exported to many nations. Relatively few countries reject import of corn and soybeans produced with transgenic technology. So what makes you think wheat would be a different story?

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