For release: Aug. 13, 2003
Contact: Fred Cholick, (605) 688-4148

Land-Grant Universities Play Key Role in Biotechnology

 BROOKINGS, S.D. -- Land-grant universities and federal researchers will play a vital role in using biotechnology to meet local and regional needs in production agriculture, scientists told South Dakota lawmakers.

 Wheat researcher R. James Cook of Washington State University emphasized the need for the land-grant system's local approach to agriculture in speaking at the South Dakota Legislator Biotechnology Workshop. The workshop, sponsored by the South Dakota Agri-Business Association, was held Aug. 7-8 on the South Dakota State University campus. About 30 of South Dakota's 105 lawmakers attended.

 Cook said the two uses of biotechnology in agriculture that producers are most familiar with -- crops that have been genetically altered to make them resistant to insects or to make them tolerant of herbicides -- have widespread use and were logical investments for biotech agribusiness firms. But large biotech companies will be far less likely to invest in biotechnology applications to solve local or regional issues for producers, Cook said. That's why federal researchers and land-grant university scientists are so important, Cook said.

"It's estimated that there are somewhere between 900 and 1,000 projects right now in land-grant university and USDA laboratories moving toward biotechnology applications to solve specific problems for production agriculture, or utilization of these products," Cook said. "Most of these are what we would have to call minor use, they're to solve a single problem, maybe, for a local area. It's what the land grant university system has always done."

At a land-grant university, Cook said, it's not unusual to release a crop variety to address a problem that's common in only a few counties. A large biotech agribusiness firm most likely would not do that.
Fred Cholick, dean of SDSU's College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences, added that land-grant universities will have to partner with others interested in agriculture in order to carry out the land-grant mission of serving the public -- including lawmakers, state and federal agencies, producers, industry, and consumers.

Cholick said that while biotechnology brings new opportunities, those involved in agriculture must also work together to protect those who don't choose the new technology -- growers of organic or conventional crops, for example.

"We have to protect the system while we're changing the system," Cholick said.

 Rep. Jim Hundstad, D-Bath, added that land-grant scientists have an important role to play in answering the public's questions about biotechnology.

"The university system is trusted by the people, and one of the problems we have with biotechnology, of course, is that people are skeptical about where it's going, what it's going to do, how dangerous is it," Hundstad said. "By having our university system involved in the research and study, we can have confidence that the results are not driven by how much money a company is going to be making."
 -ljn-
 Lance Nixon, Editor
AgBio Communications Unit
South Dakota State University
ACC, Box 2231, Rm 200
Brookings SD 57007
Telephone: (605) 688-4653
LANCE_NIXON@SDSTATE.EDU