The pesticide-free crop movement has been sprayed with a dose of bad news.
A Manitoba co-operative attempting to generate price premiums for crops certified to be free of pesticides has had a setback.
“We’re really struggling right now,” said Scott Day, secretary-treasurer of the Pesticide Free Production Farmers Co-operative Ltd.
“We just got word from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that they won’t allow us to use the term ‘pesticide-free product’ as a marketing term.”
To make matters worse, funding for the group has come to an end and the manager has left the co-op to pursue other interests.
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The co-op was established two years ago to find a market for crops grown without the use of in-crop chemical controls.
Its biggest asset was that the University of Manitoba had given the group exclusive rights to its trademarked term “pesticide-free product.”
But because the co-op’s certification process allows for the use of pre-emergent glyphosate burnoff, the CFIA won’t allow the group to use the term to market its products because it erroneously implies the whole process is pesticide-free, said Day.
He holds out hope that independent researchers can convince the CFIA to change its stance on the issue.
“We’re almost at the end of the rope, but we think we can still get through to them.”
If not, the co-op will have to consider using watered-down language to describe its product, such as “clean crops.”
Thus far the co-operative hasn’t been able to achieve price premiums for its pesticide-free crops. The only thing it has generated is a series of marketing headaches.
For instance, Day was able to secure a commitment from a buyer willing to pay a “significant premium” for last year’s plentiful pesticide-free flax crop, but the deal ended up a disappointment.
“Our buyer said he would buy it all and he never bought a bushel.”
In another case a buyer requested 500 tonnes of pesticide-free wheat, but the order came in November, long after anything could be done to meet his demands. Day asked the customer if he would be willing to contract the same amount of production this following year, but the buyer declined because he was unsure if the market would still be there.
The CFIA’s recent ruling has exacerbated those marketing challenges, but Day remains convinced that pesticide-free production will eventually find its niche.
“The premium is there if we can get the consumer and the producer connected in a way that is consistent and clear.”
Fifty producers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan have bought $100 memberships in the co-op. The numbers are small but word is spreading.
Ray McVicar, special crops specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, talked about pesticide-free production and the marketing co-op at one of the stops on Pulse Tour 2004, a field day held in Swift Current, Sask., on July 8.
He told the 250 producers who signed up for the tour about some of the work on that topic being done at the Wheatland Conservation Area. Researchers are examining seeding rates of pulse, cereal and oilseed crops in an attempt to get better weed control.
McVicar also touched on some of the work going on at Agriculture Canada’s Scott Research Farm with post emergence harrowing for weed control.
Researchers there have determined peas are strong enough to withstand the rigours of post emergence harrowing, unlike flax and oats.
McVicar told producers that while certifying crops pesticide-free is a novel idea, there is not much new about that approach to farming in Saskatchewan.
“This is just a different way of coining the phrase and maybe a different way of marketing.”
Saskatchewan producers have been using low levels of pesticides for many years because they don’t have the money to spend on inputs. For those growers, achieving a price premium is simply a potential side benefit.
