Waiting on Washington, D.C.
Farmers in the region and throughout the country are waiting on the U.S. Congress to reauthorize the Farm Bill, which lapses at the end of 2024
In this issue
Outlook worrisome for U.S. beef industry/PAGE 2
Creating some buzz: UI, OSU collaborate on bee project/PAGE 4
UI researcher studies effects of farm practices on air quality
Three Rivers Grazing Conference planned for Jan. 7 at LCSC/PAGE 9
U.S. ag industry starts talks with Trump team on tariffs/PAGE 10
Northwest growers monitoring drought-tolerant wheat/PAGE 12
FarmNorthwest and Ranch
WHERE’S THE BEEF?
Outlook worrisome for U.S. beef industry
Cattle shortage and price hikes could take a toll on ranchers
ANALYSIS
By Gerson Freitas Jr. Bloomberg News
He has staffed the McDonald’s drive-through, served Big Macs in the White House and peddled Trump Steaks on cable TV. But even a red meat-loving president-elect like Donald Trump won’t be able to save the struggling U.S. beef industry.
A severe shortage of cattle, which has fueled grocery store price hikes and wiped out billions in meat processor profits, is primed to get worse before the next election cycle.
The U.S. beef herd is already the smallest since 1961 after years of depressed prices, severe droughts and surging costs forced farmers to send more females to slaughter. Now, the possibility of new tariffs and immigration reform risk constraining supplies further still.
“All of the things he is talking about have potential negative consequences more so than anything positive,” Derrell Peel, a professor of agricultural economics at
Oklahoma State University, said of Trump’s policy pledges. “Our fate’s pretty well determined in the cattle industry in the U.S. for the next two to four years” — and it’s not good.
For generations, Americanism and the livestock industry have been closely entwined. From the cowboys immortalized on the silver screen to the pot roasts, cheesesteaks and brisket that grace regional tables, the entire beef sector — from ranching to restaurants — carries an outsized role in the country’s national identity.
But raising cattle has grown increasingly difficult, even before Trump’s upcoming
return to Washington, D.C.
Thanks to a combination of high interest rates, costly feed prices, farmer debt, bad weather and a shifting consumer preference toward cheaper chicken, struggling ranchers have been culling heifers at too fast a clip to rebuild the number of calves necessary to expand their herds. In fact, the shortage of beef cattle has gotten so acute that some milk producers are breeding hybrid dairy-beef calves to sell into the lowinventory meat market.
Cash Carruth, who manages roughly 250 cattle in Bloomfield, N.M., is among those ranchers tabling nearterm growth plans after strug-
gling with low cattle prices for most of the past decade. Even though prices have since recovered, many cattle producers are still finding themselves digging out of that earlier hole.
“This extra that we’re making right now is not necessarily room for expansion, but it’s to help us with the Band-Aid that we put on from 2015 until 2022,” said Carruth, 47. He is now selling “every calf” he can instead of retaining them for procreation. “Everybody is trying to make up for those mediocre years, especially if you borrowed any money.”
The down cycle wasn’t supposed to last this long. This past February, the
Associated Press file
In this 2010 file photo, steaks and other beef products are displayed for sale at a grocery store in McLean, Va.
USDA expected the cattle inventory to start rebuilding in 2025. It is now saying the recovery won’t meaningfully start until 2027, as elevated borrowing costs and poor pastureland mean it’s too risky to take on new cows — given the investment takes a few years to come to fruition. Even as the beef industry has experienced periods of growth over the past decades, the animal count has dropped almost 40% since a peak in 1975. During the current downcycle, which started in 2020, the herd has been shrinking at the fastest pace since the big farm crisis of the 1980s.
In beef, “there are no clear signs of sustained herd rebuilding intentions,”
Donnie King, the CEO of Tyson Foods Inc., said on a Nov. 12 conference call with analysts. The shortage of cattle has over the past two years wiped out billions of dollars in operating profit from Tyson’s beef operation, which the company expects to run at an adjusted loss for a second year in fiscal 2025.
And then there’s Trump. Although he’s very popular with agricultural communities — having won the vote in all the top beef cattle-producing states — his promised immigration reform and tariffs add another layer of uncertainty.
Meatpacking jobs in the U.S. are often held by foreign-born workers, and while big-name companies require employees to provide evidence of their work status, reduced future flows of immigrants are likely to bring higher labor costs down the line for companies like Tyson and JBS SA, Barclays analysts wrote in a Dec. 2 note. A surge in the supply of asylum seekers and other immigrants under temporary work permits during the Biden administration eased the labor shortages that plagued the industry, particularly during the pandemic. A new approach on immigration has the potential to create a “more burdensome” hiring process, reducing the pool of prospective employees and raising costs, JBS said in a recent filing.
“They’re hard jobs to fill and they’re jobs that most Americans don’t want to do,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jen Bartashus.
Audits and raids are both likely to increase once Trump returns to office, as enforcement of immigration compliance was at an all-time high during the president-elect’s first term, employment law firm Littler Mendelson PC wrote in a November note. More than 680 people were arrested during 2019 raids on Mississippi poultry plants, and a raid on a Tennessee cattle processing plant the year before impacted about
100 others. Even if all workers are in compliance, it can be a costly and time-consuming process.
Trump’s first administration “was scary, but now even more because they will be more empowered,”
said Magaly Licolli, co-founder of Venceremos, an Arkansas-based advocacy group for workers in the poultry industry. “The situation for immigrant meatpackers will look pretty ugly.”
Tariffs are also a wildcard. Producers have been increasingly relying on imports of meat to satisfy domestic demand for ground beef and hamburgers. In 2024, beef and veal imports into the U.S. will total about 2 million metric tons, a new record. Overseas meat now accounts for more than 15% of domestic consumption, also an all-time high. Producers in the U.S. are also shipping out a lot of meat themselves.
If Trump 2.0 implements new tariffs to stem the flow of overseas beef, it could give U.S. ranchers a lifeline, said Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, a group that represents cow-calf producers across the U.S. Increased supplies from overseas have given Tyson, JBS, Cargill Inc. and National Beef Inc. — which together control about four-fifths of the slaughtering capacity in the U.S. — the ability to keep a lid on the prices they pay for cattle in the U.S., he said. Tyson didn’t respond to a request for comment, while National Beef, JBS and Cargill declined to comment.
Tariffs “will provide our industry an opportunity to invest in expansion and to begin rebuilding the herd that has been shrinking at an alarming rate,” Bullard said. “Over the longterm, consumers are going to be better served because we will no longer have such a dependency on imported products.”
But what’s good for ranchers in the long-term isn’t going to appease grocery shoppers today. Although a smaller imported inventory could incentivize farmers to reinvest in their herds, until that happens, Americans who voted for Trump on his pledge to reduce prices of household staples may find themselves sorely disappointed. And higher beef prices will only speed the shift to other proteins that’s already taking place.
“If prices for beef increase, we ought to really be looking at prices relative to chicken,” said David Anderson, a professor and extension economist for livestock and food product marketing at Texas A&M University. “It’s that demand picture that might really keep a lid on what beef prices go up to because consumers are going to respond to relative prices.”
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Creating some buzz
Vandals, Beavers collaborate on bee project
University of Idaho
MOSCOW —
University of Idaho Extension is working to build a program that will train volunteers to collect and identify bees, with the goal of establishing an atlas cataloging the rich diversity of bee species throughout the state.
Oregon State University Extension created the Master Melittologist Program in 2018, training citizen scientists to collect and curate specimens toward a broader goal of documenting the bees of the Pacific Northwest.
UI Extension Educator Brad Stokes, of Canyon County, who specializes in horticulture and entomology, is collaborating with Andony Melathopoulos, an associate professor and pollinator health specialist with OSU Extension, to expand the program into
University of Idaho
Karen Blyth, of Canyon County, pursues bees during a Sept. 12 training at Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge in Nampa to launch University of Idaho Extension’s new Master Melittologist Program in partnership with Oregon State University Extension.
the Gem State.
Stokes is pursuing funds to launch and
sustain the program and has already begun building his base of volunteers.
tainly better pollinators than Apis mellifera — the European honeybee,” Stokes said. “Idaho has such a diversity of crops — especially here in the Caldwell area where we have 140 different crops and a lot of seed crops — and we have a diversity of native bees that have been undocumented to date. We don’t even know what we have, and that’s a really important scientific question because you can’t protect something if you don’t know what species you have.”
at Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge in Nampa.
Mellitology is the branch of entomology pertaining to the study of bees. Four instructors — Stokes; Melathopoulos; Armando Falcon-Brindis, an entomology specialist at the UI Parma Research and Extension Center; and Ron Bitner, an Idaho vintner and bee biologist who manages his vineyards for the benefit of pollinators — and 10 volunteers participated in introductory training session hosted Sept. 12
Largely overlooked in the past, native bees are gaining recognition for their role in maintaining healthy ecosystems and pollinating agricultural crops. Pomology experts, for example, believe the native blue orchard bee will be more crucial for pollinating orchards in the future than domesticated honeybees.
“We’re figuring out that these native bee species are almost cer-
The Master Melittologist Program trains volunteers to become naturalists who explore the landscape and collect bees, photographing any plants they discover supporting bees and placing bees associated with a common plant into the same jar. Volunteers who reach the program’s apprentice level are able to collect bees, prepare museumquality specimen mounts and capture data in a scientifically robust manner. Volunteers who pass rigorous testing to reach the journey level are qualified to identify bees to the genus level. Their work is verified by a taxonomist. In both Idaho and Oregon, the program’s registration fee is $300.
OSU’s program has already produced more than 200,000 samples of native bees tied to associated plants, which is one of the world’s largest datasets of its kind. The program has
Volunteers for the new Idaho Master Melittologist Program participate in a Sept. 12 training at Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge in Nampa. identified 600 individual bee species, including dozens that were previously undocumented in Oregon. Melathopoulos anticipates some of them will eventually prove to be previously unknown bee species and will be assigned names. OSU has also developed a tool that draws from the database of bee species, their associated plants and the locations where they were found to provide site-specific guidance for landscape revegetation efforts.
The Washington State
Department of Agriculture launched its own bee survey in 2023, also using Master Melittologist volunteers. The Washington Bee Atlas has since grown rapidly.
In 2020, Bitner and the College of Idaho received an $87,000 Specialty Crop Block Grant, provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and awarded through the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, to evaluate native bees in Treasure Valley specialty crop farm fields, employing a former Idaho
middle-school teacher, Amy Dolan, to assist in the project. OSU later hired Dolan to train a small group of Idaho volunteers to begin work on cataloging specimens for an Idaho Bee Atlas. Dolan has since left the state, and partnering with UI Extension will bolster Idaho’s contributions toward cataloging the bees of the Pacific Northwest.
“We’re just in the perfect geographical location to find all of these species, and probably some that are yet to be documented,” Stokes
said. “They might be closely associated with very rare flowers or plants, so their impact on the ecosystem might be extraordinarily important.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has provided funding for the identification of bee species collected within National Wildlife Refuges in Idaho. Any bee specimens representing new species in Idaho counties or statewide will be added to the collection at the Orma J. Smith Museum of Natural History and the
USDA Pollinating Insect Lab in Logan, Utah.
“The Great Basin has the highest bee diversity in the world, and Idaho sits at the crossroads of three major bee faunas,” Melathopoulos said. “All of the cool bees are in Idaho.”
More information about the Idaho Master Melittologist Program is available by contacting Stokes at bstokes@uidaho.edu or (208) 459-6003, or going to extension.oregonstate.edu/ master-melittologist.
University of Idaho
Without Farm Bill, ‘nation is at risk’
Republican governors, including Idaho’s Brad Little, call on Congress to reauthorize measure that supports farmers
By Kathy Hedberg For Farm & Ranch
Earlier this month, a group of Republican governors, including Idaho Gov. Brad Little, sent an urgent message to Congress calling for the quick reauthorization of the 2024 Farm Bill. The previous bill expired in September but has continued to fund certain programs until Dec. 31.
“Domestic agricultural production is a matter of national security,” the governors wrote. “If a country can’t feed itself, fuel itself or fight for itself then it cannot survive. It is imperative that the United States not become dependent on other countries for our food supply, while we have the best farmers and ranchers in the world right in our backyards.”
The governors added that “if meaningful support is not provided soon, the well-being of the nation is at risk. ... We collectively request that Congress fulfills its obligation to protect and revitalize the agriculture industry before it’s too late. Any delay would directly impact every community in America.”
The proposed Farm Bill would provide for the reform and continuation of agricultural and other programs of the Department of Agriculture through fiscal year 2029. It is a multiyear legislative package that provides financial assistance to agricultural producers and helps farmers to adopt sustainable practices that promote wildlife habitat, soil and
water conservation and carbon sequestration.
The bill also includes nutrition provisions such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which typically gets the largest share of any program in the Farm Bill. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated roughly $120 billion in SNAP spending per year over the coming decade. The number of people who get SNAP benefits tends to rise or fall along with the unemployment rate.
Jonathan Rosenau, of Nezperce, president of the Idaho Grain Producers Association, is doubtful Congress will pass a full reauthorization before the end of the Biden administration.
“Many people don’t probably realize that the Farm Bill is over 80% or more nutritional programs for families in America to make sure they have food on the table,” Rosenau said. “Insurance only makes up 8.9% of the passed budget. Why insurance is so crucial for the American farmer is that our (Farm Service Agency) programs are not near as protective as they were historically. Insurance is a vital part of today’s American farmer.
“With historically low commodity prices and top end higher input cost the insurance programs are what are helping to keep the American people and world fed and clothed,”
Rosenau said.
Gary Bailey, of the Washington Grain Commission, pointed out that the importance of the Farm Bill is it sets the support baseline for farmers to stay in business.
“This (2018) Farm Bill needs modernized,” Bailey said. “It’s now 6 years old and the cost of production has gone up quite a bit. There’s always room to improve crop insurance so we’re looking forward to those adjustments.”
The sticking points on the Senate and House versions of the Farm Bill appear to be differences over the size of increases to the so-called farm safety net. Some Democrats also oppose Republican efforts to link food stamp benefits to inflation and how to pay for the costs above the baseline for farm insurance programs.
So far, it doesn’t appear the matter will be resolved before the end of the year. Melanie B. Lawhorn, communications director for Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, said in an email that the Senate is expecting to vote on a one-year extension of the current Farm Bill authorization before recessing for the Christmas holiday. It is expected to be included in a continuing resolution funding bill. Crapo continues to advocate for passage of a new Farm Bill that supports the complex needs of Idaho’s agriculture industry, Lawhorn said.
According to farmaid.org: “even with a new Congress, one dynamic remains the same: the slim majorities in both the House and the Senate mean that a highly partisan or controversial bill will be difficult to pass, even with a Republican trifecta in Washington.”
Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@ lmtribune.com.
Little Rosenau
Lake near Lewiston. Those in agriculture are anticipating reauthorization of the Farm Bill by the U.S. Congress before it expires at the end of 2024.
August Frank/For Farm & Ranch
UI researcher studying effects of farm practices on air quality
MOSCOW — A University of Idaho researcher is leading a multi institutional study evaluating how the adoption of farming practices aimed at conserving water, reducing erosion and improving sustainability is affecting air quality.
Alex Maas, a UI associate professor of agricultural economics and rural sociology, was inspired to study the issue while wiping away dust from the front porch of his Moscow home, which made him think about the large, dusty plumes that trail harvesters working on the Palouse.
Maas will be analyzing hundreds of thousands of daily readings dating back more than two decades from
networks of air-quality sensors west of the Mississippi River to determine how weather, farming practices, harvest timing and land-use factors unrelated to agriculture align to affect air quality and human health. He’ll be working with Jim Crooks, an associate professor and climate epidemiologist at National Jewish Health, and Colorado State University researchers Jude Bayham, an assistant professor of natural resource and environmental economics specializing in air quality and wildfires, and Jeffrey Pierce, a professor of atmospheric science.
Results of the study could guide future land-use decisions, help water managers prioritize methods for conserving dwindling irrigation supplies
and justify program incentives for agricultural sustainability practices.
Maas proved the concept of the project with a $200,000 seed grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and received a four-year, $800,000 USDA-NIFA grant in July to broaden his research.
In states such as Colorado and California, irrigators have faced broad curtailments because of droughtrelated water shortages. As a result, many farmers have left more land fallow and shifted toward low-water crops. Irrigated farmland is also rapidly being lost to development.
“The goal is to see the unintended consequences of our land-use decisions broadly, and this does have a lot of
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University of Idaho
Maas
“The goal is to see the unintended consequences of our land-use decisions broadly, and this does have a lot of implications as we’re trying to deal with this water-scarcity crisis out West. We’re looking at all land because you need to control for highways and cities and places that create a lot of air pollution on their own, but we’re only trying to investigate changes in agricultural land.”
ALEX MAAS, UI ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS AND RURAL SOCIOLOGY
implications as we’re trying to deal with this water-scarcity crisis out West,” Maas said. “We’re looking at all land because you need to control for highways and cities and places that create a lot of air pollution on their own, but we’re only trying to investigate changes in agricultural land.”
Farmers are increasingly taking a long-term approach to management and implementing sustainable farming practices to stretch their inputs and minimize their environmental impacts, such as no-till and reduced tillage, conversion to more efficient
irrigation technologies and the planting of cover crops. Cover crops are planted primarily to reduce erosion and improve soil health rather than for commercial sale.
The continuing shift toward low-water crops driven by water shortages is also significant. For example, potatoes have different fertility and input requirements than dryland wheat, which could affect nutrients and chemicals entering the air.
Maas’ project will use sensor data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air-quality
network, as well as a private network called Purple Air. He and his colleagues have developed a creative method for analyzing the data. They’ll note the agronomic practices and land-use decisions occurring within a pie-shaped area upwind of each sensor associated with each daily reading. In aggregate, the data should inform them how air quality is affected by specific farming practices, as well as what to expect when farmers change those practices.
“These choices are all connected, and as we’re trying to conserve water and potentially changing these choices, how can we incentivize and disincentivize activities that have implications far beyond the borders of your operation?” Maas asked. “If we suddenly see no-till is having this big impact on what we’re picking up with these air-quality sensors, now let’s go and try to figure out what the actual mechanism is and how we can encourage that, or maybe come up with new technologies.”
The project, “Partnership: Evaluating Risks from Agriculturally Sourced Emissions of Particulate Matter,” is funded with a four-year, $800,000 grant from USDA-NIFA, of which 100% is the federal share, under award No. 2024-67024-42698.
Three Rivers Grazing Conference planned Jan. 7 at LCSC
The Three Rivers Grazing Conference, which will feature a trade show and discussions about the ranching business, is scheduled for Jan. 7 at Lewis-Clark State College’s Williams Conference Center in Lewiston.
The gathering will start with the trade show at 8 a.m. Panel topics include fall grass control; aerial applications; cow nutritional management and range management; making the most of a ranch; and a panel of producers.
The conference is being planned by the University of Idaho Extension. Information about the trade show is available from Hannah Fisher at hannah.munson@usda.gov or (208) 892-9906. Information about registration, vendors and sponsorships is available from Stefanie Hays at stefanie.hays@idahoswcd.org or (208) 507-2858.
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U.S. agriculture industry starts talks with Trump team on tariffs, immigration
By Ilena Peng, Gerson Freitas Jr. and Isis Almeida Bloomberg News
304 N 9th Ave., Walla Walla 509-525-6620 | 1-800-525-6620
The U.S. agriculture industry has started talks with Donald Trump’s transition team in a bid to advocate for the food business as the president-elect pledges tariffs and mass deportations.
with his plan to send millions of undocumented workers out of the country, it would have repercussions across the farming world, exacerbating a decadeslong laborshortage problem. The situation could be especially acute for growers of fresh produce including tomatoes and lettuce.
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Groups including the National Grain and Feed Association, which represents agriculture powerhouses such as ArcherDaniels-Midland Co. and Cargill Inc., and the International Fresh Produce Association, were among those involved in the discussions, according to people familiar with the matter. The National Council of Agricultural Employers also has a meeting on the books.
The groups are prioritizing topics such as Trump’s promised tariffs, which could upend trade with key commodity buyers like China and Mexico, as well as immigration, with U.S. agriculture becoming more reliant on foreign labor. Some industry advocates are lobbying for the expansion of a visa program for temporary workers, and others want China to stick to crop purchases pledged during the “Phase One” trade deal negotiated by Trump in his previous term, said the people who asked not to be named citing private talks.
While many farmers make up key blocs of Trump’s supporters, his policies sometimes run counter to the agriculture industry’s economic interests. Take soybeans, for example. The commodity became the poster child of Trump’s first-term trade war with China. Retaliatory tariffs from the Asian nation dried up demand for U.S. cargoes, with American shipments to the world’s top buyer of the commodity tumbling 79% in the first two years of the administration. That hurt farmers to the tune of $11 billion.
At the same time, some industry leaders are also worried about Trump’s plans for mass deportations. If the president-elect follows through
“The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals and restoring our economic greatness. He will deliver,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in an emailed statement. “In his first term, President Trump instituted tariffs against China that created jobs, spurred investment, and resulted in no inflation.”
Many migrants enter the U.S. through the federal H-2A visa program, which has allowed the numbers of documented temporary workers to surge in the past decade. Even then, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates nearly half of hired crop farmworkers lack legal immigration status.
The International Fresh Produce Association, which represents companies including berry producer Driscoll’s and tomato supplier NatureSweet, is lobbying to have the H-2A visa program expanded within the first six months of the administration, the people familiar with the matter said.
“H-2A use has become more widespread, turning the program into an essential solution for meeting producers’ labor needs,” the IFPA said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “IFPA will continue to push to rollback unnecessary regulations put in place by the Biden administration, and work with Congress and the Trump administration to modernize this important tool for American farmers.”
The National Council of Agricultural Employers also wants the program to be expanded,
according to President Michael Marsh. In addition, the group is pushing for a lower minimum wage rate as higher costs have prompted American farmers to exit the business or move food production to Mexico and Canada, he said.
The number of H-2A visas issued surged nearly 60% in the 2023 fiscal year from five years earlier. Growth in the program is “one of the clearest indicators of the scarcity of farm labor,” according to the USDA. Employers who hire through the program are required to show they were unable to find enough domestic workers.
Trump’s popularity with agricultural communities has stood the test of time even as tariffs on China left soybeans piling up on U.S. farms. After all, the former president threw $28 billion in aid at growers to cushion the blow of his trade war. Rural support likely means Trump won’t hold back on another round of tariffs, forcing the industry to get creative.
One possible solution being touted by industry groups is convincing China to stick to the $50 billion a year in agricultural purchases the nation pledged during the “Phase One” trade deal, while also having the Asian country approve crop traits that would give U.S. supplies better access to the Chinese market, according to one of the people.
The push comes at a time when China, the world’s largest commodities importer, is increasingly turning to Brazil for its crop supplies, reducing its dependence on the U.S. Railroad-inspection delays at the border with Mexico and the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation are also among topics of interest for the industry, the person said.
“There are real opportunities to work with the incoming administration to achieve positive trade-related outcomes for the feed and grain industry,” Mike Seyfert, NGFA’s president, said in a statement to Bloomberg.
Northwest growers monitoring drought-tolerant wheat
Genetically modified trait recently deregulated by government, but won’t be commercially available for a few years
By Anthony Kuipers For Farm & Ranch
Pacific Northwest wheat growers are monitoring a new development from the U.S. government that could have a significant effect on the wheat industry.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in August that it is deregulating the drought-tolerant HB4 trait in wheat.
Casey Chumrau, CEO of the Washington Grain Commission, said this is the first genetically modified (GM) trait deregulated in the country.
“There’s never been a GM trait anywhere in the world in a commercially released wheat variety,” she said.
This opens the door for this drought-tolerant trait to be integrated into U.S. varieties, she said.
That will take time, though. According to a statement from wheat commissions of Idaho, Oregon and Washington, it will still be at least three to five years before wheat with this trait is commercially grown because the “scientific process is lengthy.”
If it is grown, Chumrau said this variety could stabilize production in regions of the U.S. that are experiencing yearslong droughts.
She said it will likely be less common in the Northwest where there is higher rainfall and irrigation. However, local growers are still tracking its development.
“It’s something that we as a region are monitoring,” Chumrau said.
Before growers make any decision regarding this droughttolerant variety, she said, they must first listen to the needs of their customers. Washington, for example, exports 90% of its wheat, and its customers may not be interested in a genetically modified variety.
“We have seen quite a bit of resistance or hesitation from some of our key markets overseas,” she said.
The statement from the PNW
August Frank/For Farm & Ranch
Grain is unloaded into a truck on the Palouse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced the deregulation of a drought-tolerant trait in wheat that is genetically modified. The trait is not yet being used in commercially grown wheat, and won’t be for at least a few years, but farmers in the Northwest are keeping an eye on it.
commissions emphasized there is no genetically modified wheat currently being cultivated in the U.S.
According to the news release,
HB4 wheat is a transgenic wheat trait owned and sold by the
Argentine company, Bioceres Crop Solutions. The trait incorporates drought tolerance transferred through a sunflower gene.
According to results reported by the company in the drought conditions
experienced by Argentina in 2022, HB4 wheat demonstrated up to a 43% yield improvement in targeted environments.
Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.