Baking&Snack - July 2011 - 10

EDITORIAL

Engineering a New Era

EDITORIAL STAFF Editor Dan Malovany dmalovany@sosland.com Executive Editor Laurie Gorton lgorton@sosland.com Managing Editor Lucy Sutton lsutton@sosland.com Senior Editor Shane Whitaker swhitaker@sosland.com Assistant Editor Charlotte Atchley catchley@sosland.com Contributing Editors: Donna Berry Rebeca López-García Richard F. Stier Columnists: Jim Kline jkline@theensolgroup.com Theresa Cogswell bakercogs@sbcglobal.net Anne Giesecke, PhD info@a-dpolicyanalysis.com Joe Stout joestout@cf-san.com DESIGN STAFF Design Services Manager Sadowna Conarroe Designer Jihan Blue Manager of Advertising Design Becky White Classified Ad Layout Steve Piatt PUBLISHING STAFF Chairman Charles S. Sosland Vice-Chairman L. Joshua Sosland President Mark Sabo Publishing Director G. Michael Gude Publisher Paul Lattan Vice-President, Chief Financial Officer Melanie Hepperly Audience Development Director Don Keating Director of E-Business Jon Hall Advertising Manager Nora Wages Ad Materials Coordinator Debbie Maniez Digital Systems Analyst Marj Potts Circulation Manager Judy Arnone Director of Online Advertising & Promotions Carrie Fluegge Promotions Manager Jen Morris

o many good and sound reasons may be cited for bakers, indeed for all of grain-based foods, to support enthusiastically genetic modification of wheat that it is increasingly difficult to understand how a single imaginary negative stands in the way of this happening. That negative takes the form of concerns that consumers may refuse to eat bread or other foods baked from flour milled from wheat that has been modified by the application of biotechnology. Even though this possibility has never been tested in any substantive way by real-time production and marketing, and even though this objection is based on conjecture stirred by the worst sort of food safety and environmental scare mongering, it has enough power to prompt hesitancy and even a strong “no” from people who should know better. It is high time that this implausible situation ends and that development of new and improved wheat is encouraged to proceed with all possible haste Without demeaning the strength of any one of the excellent reasons that this should happen, it seems eminently sensible to assign priority to maintaining the competitiveness of wheat as a crop being produced in America. The way wheat has lost considerable acreage to crops with the advantage of having been genetically modified many years ago sounds an alarm siren that ought to ring loudly in the ears of all those reliant on this food grain. Primarily as the result of the pronounced upward trend in the yields of biotech-improved corn, soybeans and cotton, those crops have not only gained acreage share in regions where they historically competed for the attention of growers but also encroached significantly into areas where wheat’s dominance was once unquestioned. Improvements in the genetics of these crops have made them suited for growing in regions of higher altitudes and less rainfall that once were the exclusive province of wheat. Seeing wheat replaced as the major crop in Great Plains states such as Kansas delivers a terrifying message to those wanting to preserve and even increase production of this basic food grain. At a time when yield of wheat has barely budged for several decades while per-acre outturns of corn, soybeans and cotton have consistently risen, the advantages of biotechnology and especially genetic modification are strikingly clear. Why this is so rests firmly on how these crops have gained from the application of scientific advances that are just beginning to be tried on wheat. Even though wheat has been modified for hundreds, indeed thousands, of years by researchers seeking yield and quality gains, it is only recently that biotechnology has been embraced in a highly tentative manner. This means that it is some time before biotech-modified wheat will be offered to farmers. (continued on Page 12)

The way wheat has lost considerable acreage to crops with the advantage of having been genetically modified many years ago sounds an alarm siren that ought to ring loudly in the ears of all those reliant on this food grain.

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Baking&Snack - July 2011

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