The milling team’s visit occurred just weeks after Monsanto announced it was buying West Bred LLC and getting back into the GMO wheat game.  While the Japanese didn’t mention that event, they did note an agreement between farm groups in Australia, Canada and the U.S. to work together in a coordinated fashion to bring GMO wheat to market. The response to this development was summed up in a power point message from Masakatsu Yokozawa, chairman of the Japanese Flour Millers Association: “I would very much like to see you take the end users wishes fully into consideration in addressing this issue.”

Needless to say, the reaction of the Japanese millers serves as a reminder that it’s one thing to develop GMO wheat; it’s another thing to sell it. Starting now, the wheat industry has about 10 years to convince a skeptical Japanese public—not to mention skeptical publics in an array of other foreign countries—why genetic modification is an extension of traditional breeding which has been evolving for thousands of years.

There are some, including the Noble prize winner Norman Borlaug, who have said without using everything science has to offer toward improving the world’s food supply, millions could die. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Borlaug said: "Civilization as we know it could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.  Likewise, the civilization that our children, grandchildren and future generations come to know will not evolve without accelerating the pace of investment and innovation in agricultural production."

Famine would be the ultimate selling point for a genetic modification that fights drought and reduces pests, but it requires millions to die to make a point. Wouldn’t it be more civilized to develop a strategy that broadens people’s minds rather than shrinks their stomachs?

Japanese reticence to embrace scientific breakthroughs is about more than what they will or won’t put in their mouths. As the only nation in the world to have experienced the negative consequences of the nuclear age, they have a cultural hesitancy to embrace technology that takes decisions out of their hands. Forcing GMOs on Japan-- or France, for that matter--will not work. What will?

If you look at the history of milk pasteurization, results matter. Louis Pasteur showed that the technique of heating milk to boiling reduced the pathogens present and therefore lowered disease transmission. But it took time for this new technology to be embraced. Pasteur made his discovery in 1862. It wasn’t until 1908 that New York became the first city in the U.S. to require pasteurization. Between those two dates, millions of children were sickened and died as a result of drinking contaminated milk.

There are opponents of genetic engineering--wheat growers among them--who believe just because scientists know how to do something doesn’t mean they know how to control it. These individuals are vehemently opposed to the technology, arguing that gene splicing is risky and crude. They point to studies from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the latest of which argues that “genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields” over and above what was achieved by conventional breeding.

The National Association of Wheat Growers and U.S. Wheat Associates are supportive of the technology as are the 76 percent of wheat growers who responded to a survey addressing the issue. Having watched with interest their Midwest colleagues plant transgenic corn and soybeans, they understand yield isn’t everything and that chemical applications and trips over a field can be curtailed using genetically engineered varieties. They also realize that planting transgenic varieties requires working with companies like Monsanto—and paying a fee for the seed.

Paying additional money to buy a proprietary variety of anything means the farmer believes it will be in his economic interest to do so. There will be farmers-- entrepreneurs and traditionalists alike--who won’t plant GMO wheat. And they will find markets to sell into, just as non-GMO corn and non-GMO soybeans have found parallel markets. In the end, only one thing will make a farmer plant GMO wheat: it’s got to makes sense agronomically, environmentally, economically --even socially.

Companies or universities shouldn’t blithely develop GMO-wheat magically expecting the passage of 10 years will soften the Japanese public’s feelings on the issue. And we can’t expect governments to solve the problem.  Bureaucratic rules will never trump emotional fears.  Education is the key. The wheat industry needs to begin making contacts with sympathetic Japanese researchers and social scientists who understand the technology of genetic engineering and who are willing to explain to their citizenry the magnitude of the coming population problem. Speaker bureaus need to be established and learning programs created with the aim of educating a generation of young people who don’t panic at the thought of what science can achieve.

Demographers say the planet will be home to nine billion people by 2050. That’s 2.3 billion more mouths to feed than exist today. Borlaug puts those numbers in an agricultural context when he explains that farmers will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than they have in the last 10,000.

How can we do that? Genetically engineering wheat is one way.