Hundreds of prairie farmers have slashed their glyphosate bills this spring by directly importing the popular herbicide from the United States rather than purchasing it from local providers.
John Barnsley is one of 450 producers who received approval from the Pest Management Regulatory Agency to bring ClearOut 41 Plus across the border.
A semi-trailer delivered five barrels of the product to his Assiniboia, Sask., farm two weeks ago for the landed price of $4.35 per litre, which is about 40 percent less than he has paid for glyphosate in the past.
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Getting 600 litres of the herbicide at a cut-rate price will lead to thousands of dollars in savings on his farm and millions of dollars across the Prairies.
“Everybody complains about the price of fuel in farming, and it is a concern, but when you look at your financial statements, it is the chemicals and fertilizers that are the major costs of farming,” said Barnsley.
Producers have so far been granted approval to bring in 760,000 litres of ClearOut 41 Plus through the PMRA’s Own Use Importation program. The volume may grow as high as 900,000 litres by the end of the 2005 growing season as the agency works through a backlog of applications.
That is hundreds of thousands more litres than Monsanto Canada, supplier of the top-selling line of competitive glyphosate products, expected to come into Canada via the OUI program.
The overwhelming demand for the low-priced American glyphosate caught PMRA officials off guard, creating a situation where some farmers may not be getting their requested volume in time for spring seeding, said Jim Mann, president of Farmers of North America. The bulk buying group has spent five years getting ClearOut 41 Plus registered in Canada on behalf of its members.
“We’ve got a lot of farmers who are saving over $5,000 on their glyphosate needs and to be able to get that to some and not to others is a tough thing to have to swallow,” said Mann.
The PMRA refuses to divulge how many applications are pending but program manager Richard Martin acknowledged there is a backlog.
“All of us were caught by surprise at the volume of this. We’re responding as quickly as we can,” he said.
The agency has approved 450 Own Use Importation applications in the past few weeks compared to three in the previous 12 years.
Martin expects applications will continue to trickle in as word gets out about the program. He anticipates volumes will grow at a pace of about 150,000 litres per year, creating the need for additional staff at the agency.
For its part the FNA has appointed 15 people to co-ordinate paperwork on behalf of its members.
Mann said well in excess of 1,000 farmers have applied to bring in the cheaper herbicide, which will be doled out on a first-come-first-served basis. Most of the initial shipments have gone to southern Saskatchewan, with the average farm receiving 1,700 litres.
Price for the imported American glyphosate has crept above the anticipated $4.50 per litre mark, brought on by the weakening of the Canadian dollar and the high level of demand for the product from FNA members. But the price is still about $4.75, which is far below the average retail price for Canadian glyphosate of $7.50 per litre.
The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan is calling on other chemical companies to follow suit by reducing their glyphosate prices.
“We have researched this product and have found it to be adequately similar in chemical composition and consistency as other products being sold for considerably higher prices,” said APAS president Terry Hildebrandt.
But a spokesperson for Monsanto Canada said there is no comparison between a lower-end product like ClearOut 41 Plus and a superior product like Roundup WeatherMax, so farmers shouldn’t count on an across-the-board price drop for the other 31 million litres of glyphosate that will be sold in Canada this year.
Barnsley said time will tell how ClearOut 41 Plus performs, but he suspects it will work fine on his 1,400 acres.
“Even if it was a lower quality product, the price is such that you can put it on at a full rate and I’m sure you’ll get full control.”
