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Rural Route #8

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The view from

Mold.

"Moldy" is never good, unless I guess it's about the plus side of cheese-making. But really, mostly it's pretty creepy in the everyday world.

And so when word began trickling in about this year's delayed corn and soybean and grain sorghum harvests and about the likelihood of some fungi of several types on the grains, it brought back a lot of memories from the 1982 eastern Kansas wheat crop.

But first the story on a lot of this fall's crops is that many fields are now yielding up levels of molds or fungi, which are in turn emitting certain mycotoxins, which can be harmful to animals. Some few of them - and there are many mycotoxins available - can be fatal to animals, including human ones. Mostly, mycotoxins make animals and people sick when they eat too much of the wrong ones. Vomitoxin (you got it) is one of those.

Not to worry though. The grains are tested for levels of mycotoxins and most of the toxins are not harmful in concentrations to be found in loads of grain. Some farmers are receiving penalties at elevators for moldy products, especially in wetter regions.

It's difficult to believe that 1982 was 27 years ago, plus a few months when one considers a June-July wheat harvest.

The tombstone kernels on wheat (scab, it is commonly called) from Kansas was giving off mycotoxins enough to throw a scare into the Soviet Union, the headquarters of which was in Moscow. The Cold War was still very much on, and had been since the end of World War II in 1945.

Out here we always just "blended it in" whenever a bit of scab showed up, which it does in small amounts from time to time. But this outbreak was bigger than usual, and the reasons the communists were so interested numbered at least two pretty big ones.

First, the Soviets had factories to produce similar poisons to use in biological warfare, so they knew what could happen; second, the Soviets were large importers of American wheat from time to time, and they didn't want us poisoning them, either on purpose or accidentally. The scare also probably induced a sharp drop in wheat prices at first, but I am not sure about that.

To the everlasting credit of the Kansas Grain and Feed Association's Tom Tunnell, executive director, fresh air and sunshine were ordered up rather than secrecy and uncertainty and rumor. Kansas was host to biological geniuses from all over, including the CIA and the KGB, who heard mycotoxin experts from the top drawers of academia.

In the end, the stuff was blended in with super clean wheat from western Kansas, or fed to animals in sufficiently weakened portions.



Copyright 2009 The Wabaunsee County Signal-Enterprise, Alma, Kansas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2010 The Wabaunsee County Signal-Enterprise Alma, Kansas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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