Two years, three months and 26 days.
That’s how much time organic producers have to secure future access to one of their biggest markets.
After Dec. 31, 2005, ships loaded with organic grain will be turned away from European Union ports unless Canada’s name appears on a list of approved exporters.
Tick … tick … tick.
There is a pile of work to be done before that 2005 deadline.
To appear on the EU’s coveted third country list, Canada must prove that its organic system is equivalent to what is used in Europe.
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Before those equivalency negotiations can take place, the federal government needs the industry to agree on a new organic standard.
The old one has been under revision for 20 months. The delay in finding a consensus on the new standard is making government officials nervous.
“We really need to move on this as soon as possible,” said Roxan Hoshangi, agricultural affairs officer at the Canadian mission to the EU.
Time is of the essence, she told a small group of organic producers, processors and certifiers in Saskatoon for a recent exporting seminar.
“If we don’t do the things we need to do in a very expeditious manner no one will have access (to the EU),” she warned.
Hoshangi said rapid adoption of a revised national standard is “absolutely critical” if Canadian organic farmers want to retain a market worth an estimated $200 million annually.
“I wanted to come and personally deliver this message because I see the products on the market over there and we’re losing time, so we need to move,” said Hoshangi, who flew to Saskatoon from Brussels, Belgium.
She said it takes at least two years to negotiate an equivalency agreement with the EU, which gives the federal government little wriggle room.
Canada is behind competitors such as Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, countries that have already made the EU’s third country list.
Organics is one of the few bright lights for agriculture and it would be disastrous to miss out on Canada’s share of what is expected to be a $52 billion market by 2008, said Hoshangi.
Janine Gibson, president of Canadian Organic Growers, doesn’t think that will happen. She is a voting member of the Standards Committee on Organic Agriculture.
She held up the latest draft version of the national standard and told seminar attendees it should be adopted by the committee in September or October and in place by November.
Gibson said the “bickering” among industry participants was about what items would be listed on the permitted substance list.
The committee found a solution to that squabble by agreeing to put the list in a technical document instead of enshrining it in the standard. That way it can be an “ongoing, evolving thing,” rather than set in stone.
Even with that contentious item solved she doesn’t expect unanimous agreement on the standard. Gibson said there is a “good likelihood” Quebec will vote against it.
But she pointed out there doesn’t have to be 100 percent consensus for the document to be approved.
Gibson’s presentation quelled some of Hoshangi’s fears, but the debate left some exporters a little shaken.
“It’s pretty scary that they’re maybe going to miss the deadline,” said Sheldon Vanin, general manager of Northern Quinoa Corp., a Kamsack, Sask., firm that exports organic borage, flax and pulses to Germany.
“We better pull up our socks quickly.”
