Time is right for biotech wheat - U.S. growers

By Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Oct 23 (Reuters) - 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.