Source of GMO wheat in Oregon remains mystery – Hawaii News – Honolulu Star-Advertiser

GRANTS PASS, Ore. » Oregon farmers are moving ahead with plans to start planting their next crop as questions remain about the source of a patch of genetically modified wheat found in a farmer’s field there last spring that threatened trade between the Pacific Northwest and other countries.

Speculation about the origin of the unapproved wheat discovered in northeastern Oregon ranges from saboteurs to a passing flock of geese. The U.S Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said Friday their investigation is ongoing.

Grass Valley wheat farmer Darren Padget says they may never know for sure, but he and other farmers are going ahead with plans to start planting winter wheat in mid-September.

“It’s one of those things where you just scratch your head,” the Oregon Wheat Commission member said as he loaded another truck with seed wheat to haul to a supplier for the local farmers’ co-op. “Everybody’s talking about seeding. We had rains through here the other day that will make seeding conditions good.”

Blake Rowe, the commission’s CEO, said although Asian buyers stopped placing orders for a couple of months, the overall economic impact has been minimal, and markets are back to normal.

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all resumed placing orders for Northwest wheat after tests failed to turn up any that was genetically modified.

The Japanese government tested 1.2 million metric tons of U.S. wheat for GMO material without finding any, according to the trade group U.S. Wheat Associates.

“The customers came back before the harvest was really finished,” Rowe said from his Portland office. “It didn’t really interfere too much with the movement of wheat.”

If there is any more genetically modified wheat growing, farmers won’t know until spring.

Fields that grow wheat this winter will be sprayed with herbicides after harvest in the spring, so they can lie fallow for a year. Any wheat growing after it has been sprayed is likely to have been genetically modified to survive herbicides, which makes it easier to grow.

That’s how the rogue strain was discovered.

Trimble Introduces Next Generation Agriculture Display


Trimble Introduces Next Generation Agriculture Display Display’s Modern Architecture Provides Expandable Platform for Precision Agriculture Solutions; Integrates with New Connected Farm Dashboard

Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) introduced today the TMX-2050™ display, a next generation display built on the popular Android™ operating system, which offers an intuitive interface that enables farmers to easily implement precision agriculture solutions as their business grows. Its flexible software platform improves the ability for a customer to seamlessly add applications to their operations while the modular architecture allows for future expandability. The TMX-2050 display is an addition to Trimble’s existing line of guidance displays, which include the EZ-Guide® 250 lightbar guidance system, CFX-750™ display, and FmX® integrated display. Supporting more than 2,000 different vehicle models, Trimble’s wide variety of displays allow farmers to choose the solution that is right for their operations ranging from basic guidance to advanced precision farming applications.