NORVAL, Ont. – Harry Brander is a feedlot operator on the outskirts of Toronto with a serious investment decision to make.
Proposed new Ontario nutrient management regulations will require him to build a new solid manure storage bin on his farm within the next four years.
“I’m 53,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to make that kind of investment at my age.”
Across Ontario, thousands of farmers face similar decisions.
New nutrient management rules, although still under negotiation between farm groups and the provincial government, will impose costs and restrictions on where and how much manure, fertilizer and biosolids can be spread on farmland. Implementation will be staggered depending on the size of the livestock operation with the largest (larger than 150 dairy cows or 1,800 finishing pigs and equivalent feedlots or cow-calf operations) expected to comply by 2005 and the smallest by 2008.
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Farmers have argued the regulations as first proposed in December would be too onerous and expensive, written mainly by environment department bureaucrats with little understanding of costs or how farming operates.
The regulations would cut in half allowable application rates and Brander said he will be hard-pressed to find enough land to spread the manure from his 150-200 head feedlot operation.
Discussions about tougher nutrient management rules have been floating on the edges of the Ontario policy debate for years but the deaths of seven people from E. coli contamination in Walkerton water in 2000 “added urgency,” said Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett.
“We believed the government wanted to introduce measures to protect the quality of drinking water in the province,” he said in a February commentary published by the OFA. “Instead, the regulations as originally proposed took on a prescriptive nature with details that would micro-manage farming in Ontario. Many farmers could see themselves being forced from the business of farming under such regulations.”
The OFA has been negotiating with agriculture minister Helen Johns to soften the impact. In recent weeks, she has made some concessions: agriculture rather than the environment department will be the first line of enforcement; some of the more onerous proposals will be softened; and the agriculture department likely will contribute to some of the required investment costs.
But farmers are still nervous about potential impacts and are warning farmers in other provinces that this may be what they face when their governments move on the nutrient management issue.
“I wouldn’t be surprised that this will be a model for other provinces,” said Bonnett.
It has been a major policy headache for Johns, who has worked hard to be an ally for farmers in dealings with the government. There was almost universal farmer anger and some stormy consultation meetings.
But even some farmers angry at the proposals don’t blame her.
“I think we’re lucky to have Helen Johns there because she is trying to be flexible and to correct some of the excesses that environment tried to put in,” said Craig Oldham, a farmer from Huttonville, west of Toronto.
But still, he is worried.
Oldham has a contract with a local chicken processing company to buy biosolids for spreading. He spreads some on his 400 acres of grain and oilseeds crops and contracts with neighbours to fertilize their land.
The regulations propose that there be a seven-day notice before biosolids are spread and Oldham said that could put him and the biosolids industry out of business. It would mean the chicken plant byproduct would be used for compost or put in the dump rather than be recycled as a fertilizer, he said.
“Within the proposed legislation, applicators shall be required to inform municipalities, as well as the ministry of environment and residences within a 450-metre radius of the site one week in advance of application,” he complained to the agriculture ministry.
OFA president Bonnett said that while some compromises have been made, much hard bargaining remains and farmers have to expect higher costs, more regulation and paperwork no matter how the talks end.
