Coming a Cropper : Virus Quarantine Keeps State’s Farmers From Shipping Wheat

With a nationwide pasta shortage looming and wheat prices surging worldwide, vast wheat stockpiles are building up in California’s Imperial Valley--harvested and tested clean of the so-called Karnal bunt virus but unable to be shipped because of a federal quarantine.

Most U.S. flour mills are refusing to accept any grain from quarantined areas, even if certifiably clean, fearing that spores of the dreaded fungus may get past inspectors and contaminate the wheat milling infrastructure.

The conundrum is exasperating the valley’s wheat farmers, who are in a rapidly tightening financial vise.

“We’ve had 700 fields tested and have found zero spores,” said Imperial grower Larry Gilbert, who expects to harvest 300 acres of durum in a few weeks and says it’s time to lift the quarantine. “Our wheat must be recognized for what it is, clean as it should be. We need to be treated fairly by the regulatory agencies.”

About 180,000 tons of durum, the high-quality wheat variety used to make pasta, are sitting in storage or lying in golden mounds on the Imperial Valley floor near the Mexican border. The valley grows 15% of the nation’s durum crop and nearly 2% of of its wheat.

The dilemma is especially frustrating to farmers because wheat prices are approaching record highs because of high worldwide demand and a poor U.S. harvest forecast for 1996 because of an ongoing drought in the Southern Plains.

The culprit is Karnal bunt, a virus first detected in March in wheat seed lots in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The disease reduces wheat yields and values and gives the grain a fishy odor. There is no treatment.

To contain it, the U.S. Department of Agriculture slapped quarantines on infected areas and required that every field be tested for Karnal bunt and found clean before harvested grain could be shipped out.

Smaller growing areas near the Arizona border have tested positive for the fungus. But about 60% of the Imperial Valley crop, the state’s biggest source of durum, has been tested and all fields so far have been found clean.

The San Joaquin Valley, where most of the state’s wheat is grown, is not under quarantine.

That the Imperial Valley’s farmers still can’t get their grain to a voracious market illustrates just how nervous regulators and the grain industry are about the fungus, which originated in India but had never before been detected in this country.

So far only three mills--one in Fresno, one in Virginia and another in Ohio--have agreed to accept grain from the Imperial Valley. But Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner Stephen Birdsall says those shipments account for only 5% of the harvest.

The mills that accept wheat from the quarantined areas are being forced by the USDA to heat-treat the milling byproduct, which is recycled as cattle feed. Many mills don’t have the equipment for that, and though the USDA is giving millers a special subsidy of $35 a ton, mill owners say it’s not enough.

Meanwhile, officials in such major wheat states as Kansas, Nebraska and North Dakota are forbidding the movement of grain-laden rail cars from quarantined areas through their states, fearful that undetected Karnal bunt spores might somehow blow off the trains and into adjacent wheat fields.

All this leaves Imperial Valley farmers in a serious bind. Because most cannot ship their grain and be paid for it, they can’t pay off bills and bank loans coming due during the prime harvest season.

They will eventually receive some government compensation, but it’s not yet known how much. The USDA said this week that a comprehensive aid package is under study, one that might pay farmers all or part of the difference between contract prices and the salvage value of quarantined wheat. But Paul Drazek, an aide to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, said farmers should not expect financial relief soon.

Many farmers are continuing to spend money to maintain crops in the field or in storage, gambling that they can recoup those outlays. Meanwhile, the contract harvesting teams used by most valley farmers demand payment within a week.

“Many farmers are concerned that the money from this year’s crop will not arrive in time to pay their creditors [or] their harvesters. And if the harvesters are not paid, within a short period of time, the harvest could come to a halt,” said Mark Osterkamp, a Brawley farmer who is harvesting 700 acres of durum.

But agronomists say the government can’t be too careful with Karnal bunt, which is difficult to eradicate, easily spread and potentially devastating if it contaminates the rest of the U.S. wheat industry.

“The dangers of the fungus spreading make it imperative that any unreasonable risk be avoided,” said Leland Jackson, a UC Davis wheat agronomist.

“You can test something and have it turn up negative but it doesn’t give you 100% surety that nothing’s there.”

Meanwhile, farmers are stashing the harvested grain wherever they can find space, hoping that somehow the market will open up.

“They’ve run out room in the silos, so they’re putting the grain on the ground,” said Bonnie Fernandez, executive director of the California Wheat Commission, a trade group representing growers.

Industry officials say the Imperial Valley durum crop is a big enough piece of the nation’s output that its problems will probably cause pasta prices to go up and force millers to import durum wheat from Italy, Turkey and other foreign sources.

“We’re hopeful there won’t be a pasta shortage,” Fernandez said. “But there is no question we have extremely tight supplies and no question that we will see higher pasta prices.”

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Against the Grain

Many California wheat farmers have been unable to profit from higher wheat prices because of the federal quarantine imposed after the discovery of the Karnal bunt virus in wheat seedlots. U.S. wheat harvests inventories and average prices:

Harvests (Billions of bushels):

1996*: 2.07

*

Ending Stocks (Inventories) (Millions of bushels):

1996-97*: 329

*

Average Price (Price per bushel):

1996*: $5.00

* Projected

Source: USDA. Researched by JENNIFER OLDHAM / Los Angeles Times