World Grain - November 2009 - 48

FEATURE: PROGRESS FOR BIOTECH WHEAT

Competitiveness Crisis in Wheat," and
at a series of Wheat Summit meetings that followed. The Wheat Summit meetings included representatives from throughout the wheat chain

and more profitable corn and soybeans.
In 1995-96, U.S. farmers harvested
24,668,000 wheat hectares and produced 59,404,000 tonnes of wheat,
according to the U.S. Department of

"Shifting land away from wheat will add risk and costs to the
system."
- Jim Bair, vice-president, NAMA

- from farmers and scientists all the
way to branded food companies and
retailers.
This most recent industry report
shows that from the time GM corn
(maize) and soybeans were introduced
to the market in the early 1990s, wheat
plantings around the world has stayed
essentially flat and decreased significantly in the U.S. as producers have
shifted from wheat to higher yielding

Agriculture (USDA). In 2008-09, the
USDA projects 20,414,000 hectares of
harvested wheat and 59,428,000 tonnes,
a total that is virtually unchanged from
14 years earlier.
Meanwhile, harvested corn area increased from 26,390,000 in 1995-96
to 32,378,000 in 2008-09 and production soared from 187,970,000 tonnes
to 329,059,000 tonnes over that period.
Harvested soybean area and production

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increased just as dramatically, going
from 24,906,000 hectares harvested in
1995-96 to 31,067,000 in 2008-09 and
jumping in production from 59,174,000
to 88,322,000 tonnes.
"Unless the wheat industry can successfully change the equation and restore its competitiveness, wheat is on
a path to becoming a minor crop," the
study said. "This outcome would be
unfortunate for every sector of today's
wheat industry: from input suppliers to
producers to consumers. While there
are no silver bullets, biotechnology
can make a significant contribution to
changing this competitiveness equation, positioning wheat as a viable production alternative for producers."
The study pointed out that North Dakota and Kansas, usually the top two
producers of wheat in the U.S., have
seen wheat acreage decline precipitously in recent years due to better riskreturn tradeoffs in other crops. In fact,
Kansas, long known as the "Wheat
State," now produces more corn than
wheat.
"Even in the drier areas of the western Great Plains, where there has not
historically been sufficient rainfall to
produce corn, the advent of droughttolerance traits in the first half of the
next decade is expected to expand the
Corn Belt further west at the expense
of wheat acres."
Data compiled by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) show that wheat net returns are
consistently half or less the net returns
for corn and soybeans. The divergence
between the net returns of these crops
for the seven years in which the data
were compiled (2002-03 to 2008-09)
show that in no year did the net returns for wheat exceed either corn or
soybeans. Therefore, the data suggest
the disparity in net returns to be a longterm problem rather than a symptom of
recent volatility in the markets.
FOOD INDUSTRY CONCERNS
Declining production of wheat is a
concern to the milling, baking and food

For more information, see Page 86.

November 2009 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

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World Grain - November 2009

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