Oregon Potato Growers Turn Backs on Monsanto's NewLeaf Potatoes
Oregon's Potato Crop
Amy Martinez Starke / The Oregonian 11dec00
Responding to consumers, Oregon potato growers have turned their backs on Monsanto's genetically modified NewLeaf potatoes. Oregon state and commodity spokesmen say they don't know of any Oregon growers who planted them this year after big potato processors refused them. Processors in other states are shunning them as well.
Nobody in the United States is admitting they grow them," said Oscar Gutbrod of the state's Oregon Seed Certification Services, an agriculture professor at Oregon State University.
"There is no known commercial interest in them," said Will Wise, president of the Oregon Potato Commission. "There may be some growing here and there, but I don't know of any. It's all over."
Mark Buckingham, a Monsanto spokesman, said some small commercial plots were in southeastern Oregon. "The market for them" nationwide, he said, "is very small."
"It'll come back; it's just too useful," for a number of reasons, predicted Al Mosley, potato specialist with the OSU Extension Service and an associate professor.
Two years ago, Wise said, about 1 percent to 1.5 percent of Oregon potatoes were grown from Monsanto's NewLeaf Russet Burbank seed potatoes. Genetically, the potato was been spliced with Bt, a bacterium and natural insecticide, so that all parts of the plant kill the Colorado potato beetle. A newer variety, NewLeaf Plus, both kills Colorado potato beetles -- not a huge problem in Oregon -- and includes resistance to potato leaf-roll virus, which is a bigger problem in the Northwest.
The majority of the dozens of federal permits issued from 1994 to 1999 for genetically modified crops in Oregon were for potatoes, according to state figures, but most permits are now for grasses and other crops.
In Oregon, companies that want to grow genetically modified plants as part of their research must obtain a permit from the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which the state then reviews to ensure that the plants do not pose a risk to Oregon agriculture and comply with regulations such as quarantines. Oregon actually has no regulations for biotech crops, said Nancy Osterbauer of the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Buyers of Oregon's potatoes -- big ones such as Lamb Weston, J.R. Simplot (which supplies McDonald's) and McCain Foods, as well as small ones including Kettle Foods and Reser's -- are refusing genetically modified potatoes, Wise said.
Many of the companies consider consumer fears in European and Asian markets, where debate rages over genetically engineered foods.
In Oregon, 75 percent of potatoes go to processors where they are frozen or dried and formed into french fries, chips and flakes. The rest go to the fresh market.
For fall 2000, Wise added, 57,000 acres were planted with potatoes in the state, valued at $138 million.
A CLOSE COUSIN It's all in the family. Wheat, the grain we eat, has a close cousin called jointed goatgrass, which is a weed. So close a cousin that wheat and jointed goatgrass can cross naturally and form partially fertile hybrids.
As plant geneticists get ready to develop a wheat strain that's resistant to herbicides, including Roundup, the relationship becomes critical. Although genetically engineered herbicide-resistant wheat could be one method of control, what's to keep the Roundup-resistant gene from migrating from the desirable plant to the undesirable wild, weedy relative, transferring its herbicide protection back to goatgrass -- creating, in effect, a superweed that the herbicide can't kill?
Scientists say the risks of that gene flow happening are low, but they hope to prevent them from arising in the first place or to develop ways to cope with it.
Carol Mallory-Smith, a weed scientist at Oregon State University, and colleagues in Oregon and Idaho received a four-year, $900,000 grant in September to find out how significant the risk is and to develop ways to prevent the escape of genes from genetically modified wheat into jointed goatgrass.
Jointed goatgrass is a big weed problem in the United States. It costs growers millions of dollars a year in reduced production and grain value.
Herbicides that kill jointed goatgrass also kill wheat.
Mallory-Smith's work isn't specific to Roundup Ready wheat. She started studying the occurrence and the nature of herbicide-resistant goatgrass, weeds that developed some resistance on their own, before genetically modified wheat became an issue. "It's sort of irrelevant whether (the wheat is) GMO or traditional breeding, because the result is the same," she said. "It doesn't matter if it's transgenic or not" as far as her research is concerned.
The grant is from the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems, a federal research funding program. Other researchers involved in the project are Bob Zemetra, a professor and wheat breeder at the University of Idaho; Don Morishita at University of Idaho; and Oscar Riera-Lizarazu, assistant professor, Crop and Soil Science, OSU.
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