2-16 NWR Wheat Trade Imbalance

2-16 NWR Wheat Trade Imbalance

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
This is your Northwest report for Thursday, February 16, I'm David Sparks and in an op-ed published in Canada's "News Hub Nation," U.S. Wheat Associates Chairman and wheat farmer Jason Scott and Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association President and wheat farmer Levi Wood called on the Canadian government to take the steps needed to allow "a free flow of grain in both directions across the border. Currently, Canadian farmers delivering wheat into the U.S. receive equitable treatment with grain grown south of the border; however, because of legislation and regulation that existed for years before the marketing freedom changes came to western Canada, U.S. producers who currently deliver wheat into Canada automatically receive the lowest grade, regardless of the quality or variety of grain. Because of the extraordinary amount of wheat that we grow in the Northwest, I called executive director of the Idaho Wheat Commission, Blaine Jacobson. "wWhere there seems to be an issue is in the hard red spring growing states, the Dakotas and Montana. Idaho grows soft white and we exported through the Port of Portland and we don't compete too much with that class of wheat with the Canadians. They tend to grow in those prairie provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. I have to believe under NAFTA, it's not that there aren't big trade distorting subsidies."

A team of researchers, led by the University of Missouri, has found that cyst nematodes invade and drain nutrients from potatoes, sugar beets and soybean plants by secreting "mimicked" peptides they create that act like the plant's signaling systems.

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