Dear Sens. Amy Klobuchar and John Boozman:
We in the wheat industry applaud the fact that you are entertaining the reauthorization of the U.S. Grain Standards Act.
As you have stated in past remarks it is essential that we as a country have such standards not only to assure our own people as to the quality of our commodities, but also to assure our foreign customers of that same quality.
The purpose of this letter is to make a request pertaining to wheat. It is a request made not too long ago to the Federal Grain Standards Board, but one that for some reason did not merit change. You are aware that the wheat industry exports well over half of the product that we grow, therefore, it is essential that we have the proper standards and classifications of wheat to be able to compete with our foreign competitors.
Our country is waking up to the fact that to have a healthy active lifestyle we must first take care of our bodies. This involves having a healthy diet. You may ask what does that have to do with the Grain Standards Act? In the wheat world it can play a major role in promoting a healthy diet simply by changing the classification of the white wheats. It can assist in making a healthy whole grain product more readily available and more affordable to people all around the world by promoting more production of those wheats.
For some reason our own wheat industry partners have not gotten on board with this simple request and when last presented to FGIS for change they did not voice support of the change, instead mostly remained silent. The proposal made to FGIS was a simple one.
Currently there are six classifications of wheat. Hard red winter and hard white winter are two of those six classifications. It was requested that rather than winter wheat having separate classifications, they should instead be classified as winter wheat, which would then have two sub-classes. One would be hard red winter and the other would be hard white winter. This would also make hard white spring wheat its own class.
We realize that you alone cannot make this change, we are however, asking for your support and that perhaps you can bring it up with FGIS. At the time the proposal was made to FGIS, FGIS was not opposed to making the change. All wheat farmer organizations were in favor, but we were told that someone within the wheat industry opposed the change, therefore classifications remained the same.
Ron Suppes is a farmer from Dighton, Kansas.
