OPINION
Farmers grow grey waiting for new sprays
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture Jack Wilkinson needs a 'take no prisoners' attitude to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA). The 'nice guy' approach to the federal government's policies is costing farmers time and money. Tobacco farmers paid the price this year for the tangled regulatory approval process for the chemical Aliette, a fungicide for blue mould. As the number of infected farms grew from 85 to 900, Aliette was approved as an emergency treatment, but the supply was quickly exhausted. Growers were eventually saved by a prolonged drought.
While Liberal MPs crow about how well the process works, farmers have been cleaning up the mess for the last two months.
In North Carolina, growers got an emergency exemption to use Acrobat MZ fungicide, which stops the blue mould in the development period. Ontario growers were warned not to use this non-approved solution.
A similar situation took place in 1979 when Ridomil, which would have stopped the disease, was withheld for one year, then approved. There is one set of rules for the U.S. and one set for Canada.
The PMRA wants to double the number of bureaucrats working in pesticide regulation. The proposal comes with a price tag of $16.5 million on Canadian pesticide sales of $104 million. Farmers will get little input while paying the piper. Could this cost be reduced by using pharmacology and toxicology studies from other G7 countries? If so, let's get on with it. The U.S. is able to do the job by spending $60.8 million with sales of about $11.9 billion. Will Canadian bureaucrats be that much less efficient or just overpaid?
The process isn't working. To date, we have gained little and gone grey watching the process unfold.
Hugh Zimmer grows tobacco and corn in Oxford county.
Cost recovery may cost votes
The federal Liberals finally may be getting the message. The government's cost recovery policy for the food industry is judged by many to be out of control, lacking accountability and causing both damage and resentment throughout the sector. It flies in the face of the Liberal 1993 election promise to reduce farm input costs.
Lower interest rates aside, the largest cause of increased food production costs during the past three years has been higher government cost-recovery charges.
"We have to understand that this is a broad issue, an election issue," one Liberal MP said late last month. "We promised to get farm costs down, not to increase them."
In private, Liberal MPs from across the country have been badgering cabinet ministers with complaints from their constituents. Finance Minister Paul Martin has been one of the targets.
In public, MPs have been expressing their unease. "I have been hearing about this from my constituents," Guelph Liberal Brenda Chamberlain, a member of the House of Commons finance committee, said in late October. "I have been listening."
In the Commons Question Period, Prince Edward Island Liberal Wayne Easter confronted treasury board president Marcel Masse, whose department is directly responsible for issuing cost recovery orders to other departments.
"Farmers are increasingly concerned about the multiple impact cost recovery is having on their ability to survive and prosper," said Easter.
Mass‚ said the treasury board keeps an overall eye on the impact of cost recovery and it is willing to change policies "if there is any consequence that appears to be improper." Few farmers have seen evidence of this cost recovery oversight and sensitivity.
So in late October, a cluster of farm lobbyists were on Parliament Hill to plead with the Liberals to call a halt to escalating user fees.
They made an impression on some influential Liberals. Until the federal government has figured out whether increased fees are making Canadian food exports less competitive in important markets, "we strongly urge that there be a moratorium on any further cost recovery actions," said Martin Rice from the Canadian Pork Council.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture asked for "an annual accounting of the fees being established as they affect the agri-food industry."
In a separate intervention, Ontario's AGCare coalition has warned that user fees from the Pest Management Regulatory Agency will hurt the ability of Canadian farmers to switch to more environmentally-sensitive pest management alternatives. Overall, cost recovery charges mount up. In agriculture, the target bill is more than $100 million, including $60 million in food inspection alone.
In this election year, Liberal politicians and strategists will be anxious to assure the food sector that there is a vision and overall control of the cost recovery initiative. Based on the lobby effort of late October, it will take more than government promises to convince skeptical farm leaders. It will take a concrete pre-election promise from the treasury board that the government understands that the cumulative effect of departmental cost recovery may be greater than the sum of its parts.
Barry Wilson is an Ottawa-based farm writer.
back
Network not working. Farmers often complain that consumers
don't know where their food comes from. A key link to that
knowledge was severed Oct. 31 when the five-year-old Agri-Food
Network closed its doors. Formed by farm, grocer, restaurant
and agri-business groups, and food giants such as Nestle and
the George Weston Foundation, the Agri-Food Network was "a
total tie-in from producer to consumer," says Cayuga pork
producer Ben Walpot, representative from the Ontario Farm
Animal Council. Agri-Food Network projects included a contact
directory, the Ontario Harvest Cookbook, the Ontario Fills
Your Plate display, and the Ontario Foodfare newspaper
supplement. With a $200,000 annual budget, an office in Guelph
and two staffers, the network received 25 per cent of its
funding came from the Ontario agriculture ministry. Still
unresolved is a $175,000 debt, according to the
Kitchener-Waterloo Record.
Union launches challenge. This month, 200 employees of the Highline Produce Ltd. mushroom farm in Leamington are expected to launch a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The workers claim they are being discriminated against by provincial labour legislation that prevents farm employees from organizing. Highline employees were the first and only group to organize under Bill 91, labour legislation passed by the New Democratic government. The Tories repealed the law in 1995. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union's Walter Lumsden says the case could cost the union up to $500,000. Lumsden says the challenge will argue that Ontario agricultural workers are being discriminated against and denied the right to bargain for workplace improvements, including health and safety standards, holiday pay and overtime. Average wage paid to employees is $11 per hour.
Express rebate. Ontario farmers are seeing a new twist in the
Farm Tax Rebate application system. The provincial
agricultural ministry has mailed some farm property owners a
new "express payment mailer". Property owners who have a valid
1996 Farm Business registration number and who have not had a
change to their property status in the last two years, do not
have to complete an application form this year. These farmers
will receive an "express payment" - a cheque or direct deposit
based on information currently on file at the ministry.
Property owners whose information has changed over the past
two years will receive a conventional application form, which
requires information on the farming operation. Deadline for
submitting forms is Dec. 31, 1997. For more information call
1-800-469-2285.
Ten thousand dollars and lots of patience. It's a small price to pay for an award-winning farm video sponsored by both Niagara federations of agriculture. Executive-producer Henry Swierenga, an Ontario Federation of Agriculture member service representative, says the 13-minute video Where Does it all Come from? is targetted at grades three and four. Produced in partnership with the Niagara College Television Arts program and filmed by graduate Lucy Decandido, the video won first prize in the Instructional category at the recent TVO Telefest awards. It has been distributed to Niagara and Halton schools, and Swierenga is looking for a way into the Toronto school system. Swierenga says help from Niagara College was key: a video of that calibre would normally cost $40,000. Single copies cost $10: (905) 957-3044.
Here's a toughie for your average animal rights activist. An Irish expatriot farming in Haldimand-Norfolk reports a fishy tale relating to live sheep exports from Ireland.
It seems that an inordinate number of dead sharks and whales were washing ashore, until someone finally made the connection with the sheep trade. The Irish sailors aboard tankers loaded with live sheep headed for Iran were throwing dead animals overboard, and the sharks and whales were choking on the fleece.
When a law was passed requiring any animals thrown overboard to be skinned first, the seamen's union refused. As a compromise, it was ruled that a shepherd make the trip with the sheep.
All of which makes for an agonizing choice for the animal rights activist - sheep or sharks? But no one ever said it was an easy life.
As for our Irish informant - despite his native land's fondness for blarney, he swears this isn't just another fish story.
Farmers looking for a way to get even with those pesky Canada
geese which invade their infant crops each spring can look to
the poor to even the score.
For the second year, the Minnesota government, tired of
freeloading Canada geese, has trapped, defeathered,
eviscerated and distributed the birds to bums, complete with
recipes.
Canada geese flock to the twin cities of Minne-apolis and St.
Paul by the thousands, leaving politicians, hip-deep in goose
poop complaints, to look for ways to dispose of Canada's fair
fowl, according to Western Report.
Other jurisdictions are also looking for ways to rid
themselves of the honking menace. Clarkstown, a suburb of New
York City, also launched a pilot cull this year. It cost the
city $4 per bird for processing, but it's money well spent if
you can bump off 251 birds, says Clarkstown mayor Charles
Holbrook.
When his Bou-Matic balloon sailed majestically into the skies
above Burford at last September's Outdoor Farm Show, milking
equipment dealer Jack Wharram thought he'd seen the last of
it.
Whether a kid had cut loose the 25-foot blue and white
Bou-Matic blimp with a giant cow on each side, or the moorings
simply gave way, no one will ever know - "It went up, that's
all we know," says Wharram, with Capital Dairy Systems Inc.,
Woodstock.
But no one was more surprised than Wharram three days later,
when someone called to say the bovine blimp had been located
in a swamp some 100 miles east, on the Six Nations Indian
reserve.
It seems the rain had filled the blimp's stabilizer fins with
water, bringing it down. The blimp, which was restored quickly
enough to fly at the Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin last
month, may fly again at next year's Outdoor Show. If it does,
Wharram plans to use a heavier halter.
He also reveals that there was a finder's fee for the locals
on the reserve who found the blimp, and were very co-operative
in turning it over. But he won't say how much, in case it
leaks out.
If you're in the manure tanker business, your export
possibilities are limited. Let's just say air can be an
expensive commodity to ship.
A Dutch farmer moving his family back to Holland a few years
ago, however, wasn't going to be deprived of his beloved Nuhn
manure spreader. So he came up with an ingenious solution that
could help bring Ontario manure spreaders to the four corners
of the globe: He packed up the family belongings - presumably,
floor lamps and all - inside the spreader tank, and headed for
the high seas.
Once back home, he simply opened the back end of the tank, and
unloaded. The family has since come back to Canada.
To Dennis Nuhn for providing us with this Unearthed item -
our, er, tanks.
Used to be that a breathalyzer was for people who drank too
much before sitting behind the wheel of a car.
But thanks to a team of British researchers, Bessie the
heifer, who doesn't know the gas pedal from the brake, and
can't parallel park, could soon be blowing into the portable
box, waiting for the light to go green.
The cow breath-alyzer will be able to detect cow diseases such
as ketosis, which can lead to coma or death, by measuring the
amount of acetone in cow breath, much the same as it
measures the amount of alcohol in a human breath.
Warwick and Southampton university researchers say the
breathalyzer requires about a half litre of cow breath to
measure acetone levels. That's not a lot of wind for
iron-lunged Bessie, who blows out four litres in every breath.