Waitsburg’s New French Connection

WAITSBURG - When it comes to food, the Touchet Valley has its French connections.

There's Spring Valley winemaker Serge Laville. There's Waitsburg's Christian

Chemin, the chef for Bon Appetit at Whitman College. And there's Pierre Louis Monteillet of the fromagerie near Dayton.

Now, get ready for a big new tie to France in the valley's most traditional culinary pursuit: growing wheat.

Group Limagrain, the biggest plant breeder and seed company in Europe, has chosen Waitsburg as the site for one of five new seed research and development stations in the United States, a top U.S.- based official for the organization told the Times.

The French- based cooperative recently signed a seven- year lease with Walla Walla-based Northwest

Grain Growers for the 4,000-square-foot building and warehouse on Main Street. It plans to employ three specialists (including a French expatriate and two local professionals) and spend at least $1 million locally in the coming two years.

It's part of the cooperative's aggressive goal of launching up to 100 new products in the next two years marketed under the LG name. The proprietary wheat seed varieties will be sold to professional seed producers, who then market the seeds to their customers.

"Waitsburg is pretty central for the entire Columbia Basin (wheat-growing area)," said Frank Curtis, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Group Limagrain's U.S. subsidiary Limagrain Cereal Seeds based in Fort Collins, Colorado.

"We're looking forward to it," he said. "It's a super little town you have there."

On June 9, a group of cooperative officials, including nine representatives and cooperative members based in France, two representatives from Limagrain Cereal Seeds in Fort Collins and half a dozen representatives from Northwest Grain Growers, will visit the Waitsburg area to tour trial sites, meet with farmers and view the former Northwest Grain Growers building that will become the French cooperative's test base.

The Group Limagrain sign has already been mounted on the Main Street building. Local Northwest Grain Growers representative J.E. McCaw will continue to occupy an office in the building part time.

The Northwest Grain Growers building, which was started by Touchet Valley Grain Growers before that organization merged with NWGG, had been consolidating operations in Waitsburg over the course of decade, reducing its staff from four to one.

"Limagrain was looking for a presence in the Northwest and we had a lot of extra space," said Dave Gordon, NWGG's general manager

The group of visitors, which includes Group Limagrain growers who also have vineyards in central France, is here June 8 - 10 during a weeklong trip to the United States and plans to visit Walla Walla-area winegrowing operations. They plan a barbeque at Fort Walla Walla with their counterparts from Northwest Grain Growers and a visit to the Woodward Canyon tasting room.

Curtis, who hails from the United Kingdom, spent the past two years setting up a nationwide network of trial and research sites to develop new wheat varieties that will then be sold in their respective markets: soft red winter wheat in Battleground, Indiana; hard red winter wheat in Wichita, Kansas and Fort Collins; spring wheat in Fox Home, Minnesota, near Fargo, North Dakota; and soft white winter wheat in Waitsburg.

"Waitsburg is the fifth card in our hand," Curtis said. "The Columbia Basin is very important for us. In between north Oregon and the Palouse, you have a lot of concentrated growing activities in soft white winter wheat. We intend to be a player in that market."

Limagrain Cereal Seeds plans to work closely with researchers at the Oregon State University in Corvallis and Washington State University in Pullman to develop new strains of soft white winter wheat that provide farmers with better yields, quality, stability and disease resistance, he said.

Last year, OSU's wheat breeder and head of the National Wheat Improvement Committee Dr. Jim Peterson left the college to become Limgrain's vice president of research to help the company build a North American wheat breeding and seed program.

Aside from its central location in the Columbia Basin wheat-growing region, Limagrain Cereal Seeds chose Waitsburg because of Group Limagrain's eightyear relationship with Northwest Grain Growers, which has been wholesaling and retailing Limagrain seed varieties for years.

Curtis said he began his initial search for a base in the region in Walla Walla, but soon found himself heading north for growers providing trial sites and a suitable facility.

"We needed premises and access to farms," he noted.

Group Limagrain was founded in France in 1942. Based in Chappes, Puy-de- Dome, in central France's Auvergne region, the company started as the Cooperative de Production et de Vente de Semences Selectionees du Massif Central. In 1965, it changed its name to Limagrain. In 1975, it bought another seed company, Vilmorin, and many other acquisitions followed.

The farmer-owned company has 7,000 employees and is the largest seed company in the European Union. The 3,500 member farmers are the for-profit entity's shareholders.

In the United States, the company is forming alliances with Colorado State University, University of Nebraska, Texas A&M, Kansas State, Virginia Tech, Georgia State and Oklahoma State in addition to the two Northwest universities.