Market Farming

[Aozotorp AT aol.com]

JUNE 23, 16:53 EST 

Farmers, USDA Deal With Plant Disease 

By ROXANA HEGEMAN 
Associated Press Writer 

ANTHONY, Kan. (AP) — Bureaucratic bungling by the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture has allowed the spread of a plant disease that could prove as 
devastating to wheat exports as foot-and-mouth disease has been to livestock, 
farm groups said. 

Wheat growers in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas say the USDA responded too slowly 
to an outbreak of Karnal bunt at the southernmost edge of the nation's wheat 
belt just as harvest was getting underway. 

Karnal bunt is a fungus that is harmless to people but sours the taste and 
smell of flour made from infected kernels. It also slightly cuts production 
in infected fields. 

The disease's main impact is economic: 80 countries ban imports of wheat 
grown in infected regions. 

That could be as crippling for American growers, who last year produced 
nearly $6 billion of wheat, as would be the discovery of foot-and-mouth 
disease in U.S. livestock, said Brett Myers, executive vice president for the 
Kansas Wheat Growers Association. 

Europe's foot-and-mouth outbreak has cost millions of dollars for the 
slaughter of some 3 million animals and a ban on exports. 

The suspected Karnal bunt contamination was first reported to the USDA on May 
25, said Michael Bryant, co-owner of the elevator in Olney, Texas, that found 
it. 

``Our hearts were sinking down in our stomach wondering what to do — we chose 
to do the right thing,'' Bryant said. 

But it took seven days before the USDA's Animal and Plant Inspection Service 
confirmed the finding, and 15 days before it quarantined the first affected 
counties. 

``Their reaction to the situation was not as timely as we would have liked,'' 
Kansas Agriculture Secretary Jamie Clover Adams said. 

Charles Schwalbe, director of APHIS' plant protection and quarantine program, 
said his agency sent the sample away for testing at a national lab instead of 
using a local one to make sure it had accurate and legally defensible 
information before taking action. 

``The decisions that emerge ... mean livelihood to people from time to 
time,'' Schwalbe said. 

The Karnal bunt found in Throckmorton and Young counties in Texas were the 
first confirmed cases in the nation's wheat belt, an area extending from 
central Texas to Alberta, Canada. 

On June 19, concern widened as the USDA added neighboring Archer County to 
the quarantined area, followed by Baylor County the next day. One elevator 
has also been quarantined in Fort Worth, about 150 miles southeast. 

Karnal bunt, which originated in India, was first detected in the United 
States in 1996 in Arizona and California. It has since spread to southern 
Texas and New Mexico. 

In Arizona, the amount of land used to grow wheat dropped almost 50 percent 
after a quarantine was imposed in 1996 in four counties, according to the 
Arizona Agricultural Statistics Service. 

But Arizona is a minor durum wheat producer, and U.S. wheat growers have 
reassured overseas buyers that the disease was far from the nation's major 
winter wheat producing region. Winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and 
harvested in spring, accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. wheat and is used 
primarily for bread. Durum wheat is used for pasta. 

With half the winter wheat going to the export market, the discovery of the 
disease at the southernmost edge of the nation's breadbasket just as the 
wheat harvest was moving north sent shock waves through the wheat belt. 

State regulators feared custom harvesters — cutters who follow the ripening 
wheat harvest from Texas to the Canadian border — would spread the fungus. 

Oklahoma, just 50 miles from the two Texas counties where the disease was 
first discovered, immediately closed its borders and ordered combines coming 
into the state to be blocked and inspected. Harvesters from infected areas 
without a USDA certification of cleanliness were turned back. 

And fear spread north to Kansas, the nation's biggest wheat producer with a 
$1 billion wheat crop and nearly 10 million planted acres each year 

``We need to preserve our heritage and our wheat industry. The spread of 
Karnal bunt in Texas should be considered a threat to Kansas wheat,'' Kansas 
Gov. Bill Graves said. 

Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., has been pursuing the issue following a request 
from growers for a Congressional investigation into the USDA's handling. His 
office said he has not decided whether to ask for an inquiry. 

Among those wanting answers are custom harvester Darryl Emerson, who had 
finished loading his last truckloads of wheat in Texas when the USDA 
quarantined the county where he was cutting. 

Emerson, of Cavalier, N.D., said he would never have gone to Texas had he 
known an elevator had first reported Karnal bunt in the area two weeks 
earlier. 

It took him three days to disinfect his combine, trucks and other harvesting 
equipment. He called the farm where he had his next cutting job and was told 
to stay away. 

``I was really counting on it — it was a pretty nice job,'' he said. 

Bryant said his elevator has already lost $200,000 for the infected wheat and 
at least another $200,000 in cleaning costs and lost business. 

If he had it to do over again, Bryant said he would keep quiet about the 
Karnal bunt and blend the contaminated wheat with the rest of the crop until 
it could not be detected. 

``I encourage any elevator operator in the country — if this is the way it is 
going to be handled — to do the same thing,'' he said. 

——— 

On the Net: 

U.S. Department of Agriculture: http://www.usda.gov/usda.htm 

Kansas Wheat Growers Association: http://www.wheatonline.com/