07/10/07 Prize money offered for new wheat use

Washington Ag July 10, 2006 The details and rules have yet to be developed but the Washington Wheat Commission is going to offer to pay 75-hundred dollars to anyone who can come up with a new use for wheat. Commissioner Curtis Hennings of Ritzville proposed the prize money plan. Hennings: "There's a lot of intelligent people out there that aren't stuck inside this box that most of us in the industry are stuck thinking in. And this 75-hundred dollar, "prize money", to the winner of this contest, which has not yet been fully defined, the 75-hundred dollars would go to the person who comes up with the most unique new idea with good market potential as far as using up wheat. It might be industrial. It might be a food use that nobody has thought of, but there is just a lot of brain power out there that is not stuck in conventional thinking and this just to try and tap into that." Hennings says you never know where an innovative idea may come from. Hennings; "They could be scientific community. It might be housewife from Bend, Oregon, I don't know. The soy industry has done this for a long time and I think it is about time the wheat industry does it." I'm Bob Hoff.