On millions of fridges across North America there’s a magnet or sticker that reads “dance like nobody’s watching.”
Canada’s grain industry wants prairie farmers to take an opposite approach: use pesticides carefully at harvest time because everybody’s watching.
“It’s a good assumption that every country we’re exporting (grain) to is going to test (for pesticide residues),” said Cam Dahl of Cereals Canada.
“As time goes on, our ability to test is getting greater and greater and public interest in this area is getting greater and greater.”
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Cereals Canada launched its Keep It Clean campaign in late August, urging farmers to follow label directions for pre-harvest applications of pesticides. Cereals Canada, which represents growers, grain companies and crop science companies, is reminding producers that Canada has a reputation for high quality and safe grain and the entire value chain must be vigilant to preserve the country’s status.
Western Canadian producers routinely spray cereal crops with desiccants or herbicides like glyphosate to dry down the crops for harvest.
However, spraying too early, when the crop is too green, can cause unacceptably high levels of pesticide residues. Spraying too late, or too close to harvest, can also cause problems.
“Some farmers might think to themselves, ‘combining a few days before the pre-harvest interval is up won’t really make a difference,’ ” Dahl said in a recent open letter to farmers.
“(But) shipments (of grain) will be rejected if samples of vessel shipments contain (pesticide) residues that are above maximum limits.”
Dahl said glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is of particular concern because the herbicide has become a divisive political issue in Europe.
A number of European countries urged the European Commission to ban glyphosate based on a contentious World Health Organization report suggesting glyphosate can “probably cause cancer” in humans.
“You saw some of the concerns with glyphosate approval in Europe this year,” Dahl said.
“Those are issues that are out there, and I don’t think (it’s) just limited to Europe.”
Wade Sobkovich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association, said grain companies have taken action to preserve Canada’s reputation by in-creasing testing of grain for pesticide residues.
“They do their due diligence to get the product to (a) country within the tolerance levels,” he said. “They will take samples from producers and hold them for a period of time. Some of those samples they’ll take and test. If there are problems further down the chain, they will try and trace it back to the elevator location or a producer delivery … to find out where the problem originated.”
Testing samples is not foolproof because it’s difficult to test every truckload of grain delivered to every elevator in Western Canada.
“We don’t have the technology to run a sample through a machine and tell us exactly on the spot … what residues are,” Sobkovich said.
That’s why farmers are the key to preserving Canada’s export markets for grain.
