Biotech alfalfa today with rice and wheat tomorrow

Will the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, that a nationwide injunction on the cultivation of biotech alfalfa was inappropriate, have a positive impact on the future cultivation of other biotech crops such as rice and wheat?

The Supreme Court reversed a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court in late June that basically resulted in a nationwide ban on cultivation of alfalfa resistant to glyphosate, or Roundup herbicide specifically. Environmental groups and organic alfalfa farmers sued the USDA claiming the agency's decision to grant deregulated status (registration) to Roundup Ready alfalfa violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Several ag groups filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in support of Monsanto in the Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms case. As the ag groups noted in reporting the ruling, "The Supreme Court reversed the injunction, finding that the District Court went too far in presuming that the only remedy available for a NEPA violation is a nationwide injunction rather than the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's (APHIS) proposed partial deregulation. The court explained that 'a partial deregulation need not cause respondents any injury at all, much less irreparable injury.'

Accordingly, the court concluded that ‘the District court abused its discretion in enjoining APHIS from effecting a partial deregulation and in prohibiting the possibility of planting in accordance with the terms of such a deregulation.'"

Also, as the friends of the court and in this case supporters of Monsanto noted, the decision "reinforces earlier Supreme Court decisions instructing federal courts that nationwide injunctions are extraordinary remedies."

Where does this leave the biotech production of wheat, rice and other biotech crops in development? It is obvious that whenever biotech varieties are submitted for deregulation, legal challenges will be submitted. It is interesting to note that the friends of the court group included the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Association of Wheat Growers — two farmer-based groups in the debate about growing biotech wheat.

The National Alfalfa and Forage Alliance was also a friend of the court participant. It was the organic growers who were concerned about contamination of their alfalfa, but there are ways to grow biotech alfalfa without contaminating organic alfalfa. The same could be true for rice and wheat if they needed to be isolated from organic varieties.

It is the potential contamination of non-biotech rice and wheat from biotech germplasm that worries growers condensely packed in the Mid-South and the Plains states, respectively.

It would appear that biotech rice is rapidly moving toward being accepted by the various consumers of the grain because both India and China are involved in biotech rice development. Those two countries can drive world trade and opinion.

As for wheat, Australia is ahead of the U.S. in researching and looking to register biotech wheat. It might be OK to let Australia do the legwork for biotech wheat acceptance in the world, but at the same time, U.S. wheat should be ready to be cultivated once the leading nations accept imports of such wheat. But being ready to pounce would be no easy task, and if Australia does the legwork to open export/import markets, they undoubtedly will try to lock in customers for the long term.

Because of the Supreme Court ruling and the ag industry's expectation of less court interference going forward, I'm hopeful that deregulation for biotech rice and wheat can happen as seed products are developed. In my way of thinking, biotech crop production of these staple crops has to be a big part of the answer for feeding the population of 2030 and beyond.