EDMONTON — A law banning fusarium graminearum infested seed in Alberta doesn’t work and should be rewritten, say some rural municipal councillors.
Westlock County reeve Bud Massey said each municipality should have the right to decide if fusarium is declared a pest and not allowed or declared a nuisance under the pest act and controlled through farming practices.
“We should have the right to make the decision which is best for the residents of our county,” Massey said after introducing a resolution at the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties convention.
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The act, which declared fusarium a pest in 1989, hasn’t kept fusarium out of the province and hinders the industry, said Steven Miller, past-president of the Association of Alberta Co-op Seed Cleaning Plants.
“That has not solved our problem. It may have slowed the issue,” said Miller.
Field surveys have detected fus-arium in most areas of the province, except the Peace River region.
“In the Peace, there are no reports of fusarium graminearum. No one is saying they should let the bad seed come in. Despite the best intention of the pest act, fusarium graminearum continues to spread,” Miller told the convention.
Barrhead County detected no positive samples last year, but 23 percent of the samples tested positive this year, he said.
“If we do not pass this resolution and municipalities can not move the pest act forward, we are disadvantaging the producers in this province,” he said. “We won’t have varieties of new seed because of this. Science tells us planting fusarium infested seed on land with fusarium will not make your problem any worse.”
The resolution was strongly defeated.
Jim Wood, reeve of Red Deer County, said clean seed is the foundation for good farming.
“When I hear there are areas with four or five percent infection, that means there are 95 percent not infected,” he said.
Let’s not infect the entire province.”
Gerry Lentz of Cypress County said farmers should not be encouraged to plant seed that is infested with fusarium.
“There is no such thing as an acceptable level of infection,” he said.
“Either you have fusarium or you don’t.”
Marie Dyck of Northern Sunrise County also opposed changing fusarium from a pest to a nuisance.
“Less than half the seed cleaning plants in Alberta have reported fus-arium graminearum infected seed lots, indicating the problem is regionalized, not province wide,” she said.
“In order to protect the regions not infected, fusarium graminearum should remain a declared pest and should not be reduced to the nuisance category.”
Doug Dallyn, also of Northern Sunrise County and a representative of his local seed cleaning plant, said the seed cleaning plants in northern Alberta “overwhelming like to stay at zero tolerance.”
Lorena Paul, general manager of the Alberta Seed Growers Association and the Association of Alberta Co-op Seed Cleaning Plants, said both organizations passed resolutions last year asking the government to open the pest act and allow for changes.
“They hoped to allow for flexibility across the province,” said Paul.
She said areas that do not have fusarium can continue to have a zero tolerance level, while areas that have fusarium can concentrate on best management practices that better control fusarium.
Don Sendziak, president of the Alberta Seed Growers Association, said a zero tolerance policy makes it difficult for farmers in southern Alberta to get and grow new cereal varieties.
“There is no doubt about it, there needs to be a change,” he said.
Rick Stamp, a southern Alberta seed grower, said the existing pest act creates different rules for farmers who don’t test their seed and seed growers who follow the pest act and don’t plant infected seed, even if only a small amount of fusarium is detected.
“It’s not helping our agricultural economy,” said Stamp.
The policy forces growers with even small amounts of detectable fusarium to dump their seed, he added.
“It’s going to put seed growers out of business. It is absolute silliness.”
