Amarillo, Texas
February 5, 2009
Finding out what the customer
wants and then working toward that goal is paying off for Texas
wheat producers, according to a
Texas AgriLife
Research wheat breeder.
That was the message heard on a recent visit to Coast Rica,
Guatemala and Mexico by Dr. Jackie Rudd, AgriLife Research
associate professor in charge of the wheat breeding and genetics
program for the Panhandle.
Rudd and fellow AgriLife Research wheat breeder, Dr. Amir
Ibrahim of College Station, were part of a team organized by
U.S. Wheat Associates to visit import customers. The team's
purpose was to ask customers what they liked and disliked about
U.S. wheat.
U.S. Wheat Associates is a national organization responsible for
export market development and is funded by wheat producers in
various states including Texas.
A similar group went to these same countries in 2001 and
listened to what the millers and bakers had to say, Rudd said.
“This trip, the millers specifically commented on how much
improvement they’ve seen since the last trip in hard red winter
wheat,” he said.
The difference has been the breeding of new varieties which
offer stronger gluten characteristics for baking purposes and
higher test weights to meet the milling needs, Rudd said.
“As researchers, these trips are important to help us define the
end-use quality targets for the Texas AgriLife Research Wheat
Breeding Program,” Rudd said.
The trip, and what researchers find out, is particularly
important to Texas wheat producers because around 50 percent of
the wheat grown in the U.S. is exported. Almost all Texas wheat
is hard red winter wheat.
Mexico imports more than 100 million bushels of U.S. wheat
annually, of which 50-60 million bushels are hard red winter
wheat. The buyers would like to move from purchasing primarily
blended loads of hard red winter wheat shipped from the Gulf to
more rail shipments, which would allow them to specify the
origin of the grain, Rudd said.
“A Mexican miller specifically said they were avoiding buying
wheat from Texas because of poor quality in the past,” he said.
“They now are interested in seeking sources of Texas wheat from
the Panhandle because we are growing newer, better quality
varieties.”
Rudd said on the trip he was also told another factor in Mexico
wanting to look at Texas again is the close proximity, which
would reduce shipping costs.
“The more that we know about processors and consumers of our
wheat, the better we will be able to breed new wheat and develop
better management strategies,” he said.
That is the primary goal of the Texas Wheat Producers Board,
headquartered in Amarillo: to use research and market
development to enhance the profitability of Texas wheat
producers. The board helps fund U.S. Wheat and AgriLife
Research’s wheat breeding program.
Rudd said not everything they heard was positive. Still the No.
1 complaint is the lack of consistency from purchase to
purchase, due to the blending at the Gulf.
“We have a vast wheat growing area in the U.S.,” he said. “There
are several different classes of wheat and many different
varieties within each class, so that accounts for some of the
variation.
“But the biggest variable is the environment across the
different regions and from year to year,” Rudd said. “There is
not a lot we can do with wheat genetics to limit this
variability except to continue to tighten our quality targets
and produce high quality wheat varieties that producers want to
grow.”
Sourcing by origin will reduce the variability in the
consistency they receive, he said.
Rudd said export buyers are becoming more and more sophisticated
and are learning how to specify their purchase contracts to
receive the wheat with the quality characteristics that they
need. |
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