The first bushels of Northwest wheat are coming off honey-colored fields in southeast Washington.
The harvest comes just as Japan and South Korea say they’ll resume buying Northwest wheat. The Asian countries banned the U.S. grain after some genetically modified plants were found in Oregon this spring. The bounce-back is a huge relief for Northwest farmers, but market confidence remains shaken.
At Blain Ranch, there’s an unobstructed view of Mt. Hood and the sound of ripe wheat shifting in the breeze.
Soon, I’m in a massive combine beside 34-year-old Andy Juris. The massive machine hunkers over the earth. It cuts blonde swaths across the field -- like a giant Hoover making lines in a deep shag carpet.
Juris says, “There are two types of farm kids those that can’t wait to get away and those that can never quite get over being a farmer, so I was one of the ones that wanted to come home.”
One challenge he’s had to deal with that his father and grandfather didn’t is what to do with genetically modified organisms. Wheat varieties modified to resist the herbicide Roundup escaped and were found in Oregon in May. Prices dropped, overseas markets closed -- and they’re only now beginning to come back just as the grain starts to roll in.
“I think it’s a relatively isolated incident that we may never see again," Juris says. "I think it was just a matter of time before this dialogue about the issue came up. This incident has forced the conversation to happen now.”
Juris says bottom line – anything grown in the field has to have a market. He’s seen other experimental crops that go nowhere. “There’s really nothing we can do with it. You can’t sell it, there’s really no market for it. And this GMO thing has the potential to be like that. There are just a lot of unknowns and there’s one thing that a farmer hates is unknowns.”
Still, Juris says two things he can’t control -- the rest of the world’s wheat crop and the weather -- probably have a bigger influence on prices than Japan and South Korea’s shut down.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty. So he’s not sure yet whether to store most of his hard-earned grain on the farm and sell it later or drive it to the elevators soon, for a quick payout.
