When Minnesota farmer Jim Call arrived in Sao Paulo in January to begin a tour of Brazilian farms, he realized he might have put his snakeskin cowboy boots in danger.
“I hope they don’t make me leave these at customs when we get back,” mused Call as he waited to pass through Brazilian customs.
Two weeks later, as he went through U.S. customs in Miami, he informed officials he had visited a number of Brazilian farms. Happily for him, he was allowed to keep his boots. But he had to sterilize them in a footbath and promised to clean them again, along with the rest of his clothes,when he got home.
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Call, who is chair of the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, didn’t see the customs scrutiny of his boots and clothes as a hassle. They were the first line of defence against a threat to his farm.
“I was relieved,” said Call, who is worried that the crop pest Asian rust might move from Brazil to the U.S. He thinks border officials should take the threat of Asian rust seriously because it has spread to all soybean-growing regions of Brazil in only three years. If untreated, the disease can destroy 40-70 percent of a crop’s yield.
“I think it’s a huge threat down there,” said Call. “That same fear is going through America now.”
Brazilian agriculture officials say Asian rust can be controlled by the application of a cocktail of fungicides, and if treated at the right time, the control can be almost completely effective.
It is unclear whether the Brazilian summer soybean crop, which is being harvested now, has been substantially affected this year.
The disease entered the country from Paraguay and has since spread and must be considered endemic, Brazilian officials say.
Both the U.S. Farm Bureau Federation and the American Soybean Association have called for a temporary ban on soybean and soymeal imports from countries that have Asian rust.
An Iowa politician in the U.S. House of Representatives has introduced legislation to ban imports of soybeans and soymeal from any infected country.
U.S. processors have been importing large amounts of soybeans this year because the country had a small harvest.
The United States Department of Agriculture expects soybean stocks to fall to their lowest level in 27 years and for 220,000 tonnes of soybeans to be imported in this crop year.
Brazil is expected to become the world’s largest exporter of soybeans this year, supplanting the U.S. for the first time.
Only a tiny amount of soybeans are grown on the Prairies, in Manitoba’s Red River Valley. Manitoba Agriculture soybean specialist Bruce Brolley said farmers will have a lot of warning if Asian rust crosses from South to North America.
“We have an early warning system – the United States,” said Brolley.
Even if the disease gets to the U.S., it may have trouble spreading into Western Canada.
“We don’t know how far north it can overwinter,” said Brolley.
Asian rust is just another disease for producers to worry about, and probably not the worst one.
“I have more fears of soybean aphid than I do of Asian rust,” said Brolley.
Call said farmers in the U.S. may have to become as vigilant as those in Brazil.
“They are all aware of it and all are spraying,” said Call about Brazilian soybean growers.
“It’s a major, major disease that we don’t want up here in America.”
