US soyabean growers and government officials have no plans yet to seek regulations on imports of South American soybeans or soy products to avoid the spread of Asian soybean rust into the United States.
"We have not requested a ban. We will not request a ban until it has been absolutely proven that the risk is too high, and that evidence just isn't in yet," Ron Heck, president of the American Soybean Association (ASA), said in an interview.
"We are very dependent on the free trade of soybeans around the world, and we have no intent whatsoever in doing anything to our ability to export," Heck added.
Asian soybean rust, a fungal disease that saps the soy plant's nutrients and cuts yields, showed up in Paraguay in 2001 and spread into Brazil, Bolivia and parts of Argentina.
Brazilian farmers last year incurred $1.3 billion in costs due to the disease in lost yields and extra fungicide use.
The ASA on Thursday hosted US plant scientists, soy industry experts and farmers at a symposium here to discuss recognition and control of the fungal disease.
"We are not making recommendations on risk management methods yet.
This is a work in progress and not complete yet. We are still gathering information," Robert Griffin, Laboratory Director at the US Agriculture Department's Center for Plant Health Science and Technology, told the meeting.
"But I don't think it's a secret to any of us that there are very significant consequences if this disease comes into the United States," he said, adding that damage projections had ranged from $47 million all the way up to $4.5 billion.
The United States is the world's largest soybean producer, and US soybean imports in the season ending next August are currently estimated to come to only 8 million bushels.
The US just harvested about 2.45 billion bushels of soybeans. But that was about 10 percent below the prior year's soybean crop, the second sub-par harvest in a row.
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