July 12, 2004

 

 

U.S. Soybean Farmers Wary Of Fungus In South America

 

Brazilian farms are infested with soybean rust. This fungus creates reddish-brown blotches on growing leaves, weakening the plant and reducing yields. It has not reached the United States, but experts say its arrival is a matter of time.

 

Soybean rust is a world traveler. South America is only the latest stop on a trip that began in Asia and continued through Africa. The fungus has been spotted in Brazil, a major export competitor for the United States, and Argentina.

 

The fungus is spread by spores that could drift into the United States on tropical winds or enter into ports on freighters. Once it is here, soybean rust will not go away, creating continuing losses for the No. 2 American crop behind corn or higher costs for fungicide treatment, experts say.

 

"It is definitely 100 percent a problem we have to solve," said Heck, president of the American Soybean Association, a farmers' group. "The difference between being prepared in advance and letting it sneak up on you is a factor of many billions of dollars."

 

Agriculture Department analysts say U.S. producers, processors and consumers could be saddled with the costs.

 

In the first year, soybean rust could create losses from $640 million to $1.3 billion, these analysts report. Average losses in following years could range from $240 million to $2 billion, depending on the severity and extent of the outbreaks, and how well U.S farmers learn to fight them.

 

The soybean business was worth an estimated $18 billion to farmers in 2003, the report said. The fungus would diminish the value of American agriculture in general by less than 1 percent, it said.

 

Farmers with infected fields could see the soybeans they harvest per acre shrink by up to 9.5 percent, the report said. In areas that could be infected, farmers would have to put down one or two treatments of fungicide, at an estimated cost of $25 an acre for each application, said Stan Daberkow, an analyst with the department's Economic Research Service. Farmers also might have to switch to other crops, he said.

 

Soybean rust could stretch through all soybean-growing areas from the lower Mississippi River into the Southeast, the Corn Belt and as far north as Minnesota, the government report said.

 

Freezing weather, which kills the fungus, could clamp a geographic limit on its spread. Most of the nation's soybeans are grown in Midwest states that the fungus would have to reach anew each spring, the study said.

 

This will not make rust go away. Even killing all the fungus on all the soybeans in the South would not wipe it out. Soybean rust can live on other plants, including another Asian-born pest, kudzu - the wide-ranging green carpet known as the vine that ate the South.

 

The mathematical model supposes rust enters the United States in 2005 and is settled in as a pest by 2008.

 

"All I can tell you is, look at the research, stay abreast of where soybean rust is," said Matt Royer, the department's acting senior program adviser for pest detection and management programs.

 

Much depends on when the spores reach the equator, where they can pick up the winds that will carry them in. So far, there is no evidence this has happened, Royer said.

 

The government can control what goods enter the country, with rules on imports from ships.

 

The United States allows imports of soybean seed if the government of the country that was the source of the seed has declared the seed disease-free. The fungus does not infect seed, Royer said. Soybean meal also is allowed because processing kills the fungus, he said.

 

Grain is allowed if inspection at the U.S. port of entry has found the product to have 2 percent or less foreign matter. Foreign matter could include leaves. The department is considering whether to tighten its restrictions, Royer said.

 

For now, farmers are watching and waiting, and they're well aware of the signs of soybean rust.

 

If it appears, farmers will just have to learn to live with it, said Greg Tylka, a plant pathologist at Iowa State University.

 

"Short of putting a bubble over a 50-acre field, there's absolutely no way you can protect the field," he said.