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D. DYE, Cargill

The role of the grain industry is to find the best markets for farmers' crops and to serve the needs of its customers in the food processing, manufacturing and retailing industry. Rapid and fundamental changes in agriculture have added challenges to that role.

The fall of the Soviet Union unleashed a tidal wave of change away from centralized economies to privatization and from single buying desks to thousands of individual buyers with different needs and requirements. The food industry has become more globalized and specialized. Farming, too, has changed and farmers today have more needs for agronomic and financial management services to prosper in the global marketplace.

One of the key drivers of this change is technology. Today, satellites in the heavens are sending information to the farmer in the tractor to help apply nutrients and other inputs with as much precision as possible. And today, the tools of modern biotechnology are developing new generations of crops with special agronomic, and soon special end-use, qualities. This promises to feed more people better while protecting the natural resource base on which agriculture depends.

The grain industry works at a high-volume, high-speed, high-efficiency bulk commodity level for almost all grains moving to market today. But it also is developing more capabilities to handle smaller, specialty crops in an identity-preservation system that extends from the farmer to the customer. As more customized grains are developed through the application of modern biotechnology, the identity-preservation system will be an invaluable tool in moving them from the farm to the market in ways that preserve their special qualities.