Farmers, environmentalists square off over Furadan

By 
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Published: November 23, 1995

SASKATOON – Farmers may soon have Furadan stripped from their arsenal of weapons against crop pests.

The World Wildlife Fund, which is calling for a ban on the chemical pesticide carbofuran, said farmers should be able to skip along merrily without it.

But Prairie Pools Inc., an umbrella organization for the three prairie pools, likened such a ban to kicking one crutch out from under a crippled man and expecting him to walk along fine.

Carbofuran, like every pesticide, must be re-registered every five years. Usually it is a formality, but some environmental groups, including the WWF, have been calling for a complete ban on the chemical. A special federal government committee has been investigating carbofuran. The chemical’s re-registration date is Dec. 31.

Read Also

 clubroot

Going beyond “Resistant” on crop seed labels

Variety resistance is getting more specific on crop disease pathogens, but that information must be conveyed in a way that actually helps producers make rotation decisions.

Expensive alternative

“This product at the moment is too important to completely deregister,” said Gord Pugh, Prairie Pool’s manager of national affairs. He said there is only one other chemical that can fight flea beetles in canola, and if carbofuran is banned, the price of the alternative will jump.

Prairie Pools Inc. and the federal agriculture department estimate the cost to canola growers would be at least $10 million per year from a combination of price increases of the only alternative and crop losses to those who can’t afford the other pesticide.

Pugh said Prairie Pools has asked federal health minister Diane Marleau, the head of the department conducting the investigation, to prevent complete deregistration.

He said Prairie Pools believes restricting the use of carbofuran is more reasonable than an outright ban. Putting a halt to aerial spraying of the flowable form and requiring no-spray zones around the edges of treated fields would ensure the chemical did not end up on land used or inhabited by birds, he said.

The drive to kill carbofuran comes from concerns about its effect on birds. The WWF contends the granular form of Furadan lies on top of tilled soil and is mistaken for food by birds, including endangered species such as the burrowing owl.

“It’s not the keel-you-over-dead kind of response when a small bird eats a granule of carbofuran, but what it does is impair its ability to reproduce and the survival of its young,” said Julia Langer of the WWF.

Pugh said there is little scientific proof that granular Furadan on the Canadian prairies is killing burrowing owls.

But Langer said many scientific studies have shown birds in North America are being killed by the substance, and one study stated burrowing owls are suffering in Canada.

But Pugh said Canadian producers mix granular Furadan into the soil, making consumption by burrowing owls virtually impossible.

Terbufos, the active ingredient in Counter, is the only alternative to Furadan, and it may also be toxic to wildlife. One of the issues that worries Prairie Pools Inc. is that the call to ban carbofuran may be only the start of a campaign to ban all chemical use, Pugh said.

It’s a charge Langer does not completely dismiss.

She said farmers should be encouraged to use fewer chemicals by moving to more organic types of farming. Farmers should at least be discouraged from using preventative pesticides such as Furadan, and only use chemicals if a pest actually appears in a crop.

About the author

Ed White

Ed White

explore

Stories from our other publications