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  • From: Aozotorp AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Farmers, USDA Deal With Plant Disease
  • Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 21:48:38 EDT




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/





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