How much will the Nutrient Management Act cost?

The cost to the industry is still an unknown. "We will be asking the government to release the (cost) study that the George Morris Centre did for them," Fitzgibbon says. "We will also ask farm organizations to do their own study to put together a case for funding."

Aside from cost, another sore point is that an odour code has been included in the regulations. Everybody who lives in the country knows that when you spread manure it stinks, Fitzgibbon says. "Now there is a code that says that, if it smells, you have to get it into the ground in six hours." It's difficult to do this without hiring a lot of labour and equipment, and it makes no-till farming almost impossible in livestock operations. "Many of the gains we've had in soil conservation and reducing compaction will be set aside in trying to deal with the problems of manure and odour," he says.

Fitzgibbon says that Agriculture Minister Helen Johns has been very supportive in trying to make this workable. "She has told us that she doesn't want to shove something down the farm community's throat that isn't workable." The ministry has developed a nutrient management branch specifically to look after implementation and operation of the new act and education of producers, says its director, Peter Meerveld.

Derek Nelson, the minister's communications specialist, says the new branch won't officially exist until the new fiscal year begins in April, when regulations come into effect. Until then current ministry resources will fund staff training, he says. Eventually this year there will be 30 to 50 employees involved and perhaps more in the future. Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Environment is hiring 11 agricultural compliance officers at a salary of between $56,000 and $65,000 a year, plus travel expenses. They will be funded as part of the operating division, says information office John Steele, and will be stationed at existing offices across the province.

The odour code is certainly up for discussion, Nelson says. "If people don't like (an aspect of the regulations), let's hear the arguments for and against and what to change it to."

The deadline for submissions to the minister was Jan. 31.BF

The American dairy crisis: Butterfat costs too much?

A spokesperson for California-based Dreyers Grand Ice Cream says high butterfat prices cost the company an additional $30 million US in 2001. Therefore, the company is shrinking its ice cream containers to 1.75 quarts from the traditional two-quart size (a 12.5 per cent reduction) without reducing the price. At the same time, Dreyers bragged in its quarterly financial report that third-quarter profits in 2002 were pushed to $103 million by "favourable dairy raw material costs."

This is pushing the buttons of American dairy producers. A newsletter published by the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM), based in Lincoln, Neb., says dairy farmers may be facing their worst year ever and that "solutions are hard to come by in the dairy sector, absent a floor price."

The last farm bill eliminated the Northeast Dairy Compact, which had set a floor price under milk produced in New England. Midwestern dairy farmers believe that it caused overproduction and resulted in lower prices. If supply and demand markets worked as they should, the OCM says, retail prices would fall with farm prices and increased consumption would deal with the surplus, so that farm prices could rise again. With retail prices remaining steady, this basic rule of free markets doesn't apply. BF

Is this a public relations backfire?

"Robert Pickton (the man charged with killing 15 Vancouver area prostitutes) never registered as a pig farmer with BC Pork. In fact, he had more sheep on his property than he had pigs!" said the press release, issued a week before the accused man's preliminary trial was scheduled to begin.

The BC Pork press release went on to state that the Canadian pork industry is worth $11.5 billion and "having the words 'pig farm' associated with the Robert Pickton murder trial has been and continues to be very negative to our industry. Please help us by just telling the story of Robert Pickton, and not associating him with pig farming."

The response was mixed. A Canadian Press story published later that week quoted a neighbour as saying "the pig farm is not functioning any more" and that Pickton was as much a scrap dealer as anything else, while buying and selling pigs on the side.

On Jan 11, the National Post, known for its British-style sensational coverage of some events, ran a full-page article on the lives of 15 women whose remains were found on the farm. The article referred to the "Pickton pig farm" and in the centre of the page was a photograph of a man, clad in rubber boots and identified as Pickton, taken in a pig pen on his farm in 1996. Not a sheep in sight.

Is this a public relations backfire? Time will tell, as coverage of the court case proceeds over the next months, says BC Pork president Jerry Gelderman. He says one of the problems has been that there are only two photographs available of the defendant.

One of those is the picture that pork farmers across Canada and the United States abhor, the photo of Pickton in the pig barn.BF

Debate on this subject could be toxic

Scientists who espouse the theory of Hormesis describe it as "a revolution taking place in toxicology" that will contradict the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's statements and policy, as well as anti-pesticide campaigns that have sprung up since Rachel Carson's landmark book Silent Spring was published in 1964. It would also put the boots to the organic movement.

Hormesis is the paradoxical effect of toxins at low levels. The common regulatory assumption is that if a chemical is toxic at a high dose, it is also toxic at a low dose but with lowered effects, says AgBioView. Hormesis research indicates that a little bit of poison can do you good. A number of examples are cited: Fifty aspirins can kill a human, but a single tablet improves circulation; one part per million of fluoride in water strengthens teeth and bones while 100 ppm is poisonous; arsenic in small doses has been used to treat cancer. It has also been pointed out that the antibiotics used by farmers in low doses to promote cattle and poultry growth are toxic at higher levels.

Expect any discussion of this topic to provoke controversy. BF

This dead pig story won't die

In Tampa, Fla., in February 2001, popular radio disc jockey Todd Clem pulled off a stunt that got him into hot water with local officials. As part of a "road-kill barbecue" stunt, Clem apparently had a wild boar killed on air.

Hillsborough County prosecutors laid charges of cruelty to animals against Clem, the radio show's producer, the owner of the pig and another listener who apparently helped to hold the animal down while the deed was done. In Florida, the penalty for cruelty to animals is a jail term of as long as five years.

Clem, who goes by the on-air name of "Bubba the Love Sponge," testified that the pig, named Andy, died quickly and painlessly. While the boar was being killed, Clem played on air a recording of pig squeals that went on for some time. A jury agreed with Clem and freed the defendants.

But the story didn't end there. In Modesta, Cal., in late December of 2002, a videotape of Andy the pig being slaughtered was aired on the local public access channel at about 11 o'clock on a Saturday night. (The videotape was made as part of a television promotion of Clem's Florida radio show.) Some Modesto viewers were livid and the city manager and members of the local council promised to investigate.

The company that screens presentations before they are aired on the public station argued that the piece met all the public access guidelines. The "viewer discretion" warning sometimes used to warn parents about shows unsuitable for children wasn't used because the show was broadcast late at night.

Ironically, the public access presentation that showed the slaughter of Andy the pig was part of a two-hour segment on free speech issues. BF

New nutrient management proposals give farms breathing room

Now in a third stage of proposals, the regulations still call for all new and expanding livestock units to comply in 2003. However, at press time, it wasn't clear if the implementation would be delayed until July.

"I've heard the Minister (Helen Johns) say to farmers that she wants to make sure she gets this right," says Maxine Kingston, acting project manager, Nutrition Management Legislation, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. "She wants to make sure that the regulations address the environmental protection goals of the government... And she also wants to make sure that the system we are putting in place is practical and can be implemented by farmers. It's not going to put farmers out of business. That is not the intent here."

Under the newest proposal, existing operations with 30-130 livestock units won't be regulated until 2007, two years after the original proposal. Existing category 3 farms (150-300 units), won't be affected until 2006, giving them an additional year to conform. Category 4 farms (300 units and up) were to come under regulations in 2004; the new proposal calls for giving them an extra year. Existing operations have until at least 2005 to comply with the new regulations, while new and expanding container and nursery crop operators have until 2007. "We have to work with their industry, says Kingston. Existing operations have until 2008 to conform.

On the cash-crop side, no-till operators won't need to incorporate manure spread on their fields as long as there is a 30 per cent residue cover. This is the number used by a crop residue program in the 1990s. Farmers "recognize the number" and "there's good science behind it," Kingston says.

Some additional points:

• Three-metre permanent vegetative buffer strips along watercourses won't be mandatory on muck soil areas, such as the Bradford Marsh.
• Land application standards, such as winter spreading, will be phased in with the nutrient management plan because there are implications for manure storages. A farm that isn't regulated until 2008 won't be restricted on winter manure spreading, for example, until then.
• Spreading on slopes could be allowed when manure is incorporated, except within 100 metres of a watercourse. Solid manure spreading may be allowed on the surface (without incorporation), except within 100 metres of a stream or on steeply sloping land because the purpose is to prevent runoff.
• With 30 per cent crop residue, winter spreading could be allowed without incorporation, Kingston says.
• Winter spreading of vegetable culls may also be allowed because freezing and thawing kills diseases that may be present.

Guelph's sexed semen research frozen for lack of cash

Highly touted in the late 1990s, the University of Guelph's sexed semen research (worth about $8 million) sits frozen in long-term storage. United Kingdom-based breeding company Genus remains committed, but other partners are no longer involved. Gensel, the company formed to develop a new product, returned the technology to Guelph in exchange for a 40 per cent share of any proceeds from the outcome of any third party negotiations.

"We are just looking into options right now," says Alan Wildeman, University of Guelph's vice-president of research.

First, some background. In January, 1998, Dr. Stan Blecher and his University of Guelph research team announced that they had found a new semen sexing technology that sorts mammalian sperm by sex with greater than 90 per cent accuracy. Belcher's technology produced antibodies that bind selectively to female-producing sperm cells, allowing the male cells to be filtered out.

The technology was to be developed by Gensel Biotechnologies, incorporated in late 1996 under the Business Act in Ontario to exploit technology developed by the University of Guelph. In August, 1997, Gensel Biotechnologies Inc. became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gensel Biotechnologies Ltd., a publicly-traded company on the Canadian Venture Exchange.

The vision then was that dairy farmers would breed their best 40 per cent of the herd to produce replacement heifers. The rest of the herd would be bred to "specialty beef animals" to produce meat with a quality superior to that generally produced from pure dairy breedings. The technology was expected to have a similar effect on the pork industry.

Gensel raised $1.6 million in seed capital, sold Genus PIC of the United Kingdom a non-exclusive license to use its sperm sexing technology in cattle and leased its sperm sexing technology to Ridley Inc. and Cotswold Pig Development Company of Winnipeg for use in swine on a world-wide basis. Monsanto Company of St. Louis Mo. agreed to assist Gensel with molecular research and with patenting in exchange for an exclusive license to Gensel's technology in the United States and Mexico.

The entire project came off the rails in the fall of 2001. On Oct. 11, Gensel Biotechnologies announced that it was unable to raise additional financing to continue its research program. "The current environment for raising money is one of the worst in many years and is particularly bad for early-stage companies, even more so for companies in agricultural biotechnology."

Last November, Gensel announced that the company had been wound down. Biological materials were frozen into long-term storage. Management was pursuing the opportunity of establishing a new Gensel division that would operate as a specialty finance company.

Brock Bundy, the new chief financial officer of Gensel Biotechnologies (since Jan.1, 2003, renamed Greenfield Commercial Credit), says the company still has a vested interest in developing the technology, but it needed to diversify in order create cash flow.

And what does Greenfield Commercial Credit do? It provides cash to small and medium-sized businesses with assets. Go figure. BF

COOL isn't so cool after all

Late January, R-CALF officials were in Washington to convince federal officials that the program could work, in spite of a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimate that it will cost producers $2 billion US.

R-CALF argues that 90 per cent of American cattlemen won't be affected by mandatory labelling of meat products in supermarket cases in September 2004, because these farmers and ranchers have nothing to do with imported products. On the other side of the debate is the American Meat Institute. At the same time as R-CALF was shoring up support for COOL in Washington, Mark Dopp, American Meat Institute's senior vice-president of regulatory affairs and general counsel, told the National Cattlemen's Beef Association convention in Nashville, Tenn., that according to the USDA interpretation of the new law, every producer along the production chain may need to contract with an independent third party to verify their records as well as the record of any previous owner of the livestock. It amounts to an individual animal identification program, and that raises the stakes.

Canadian cattlemen are concerned about COOL because they fear that they will be forced out of the U.S. retail marketplace. Retailers are understandably concerned because they will be fined if products are incorrectly labelled. Packers face charges as well. Imported beef amounts to about eight per cent of American consumption. Canada exports half of its beef and sells most of that to the United States.

R-CALF argues that sorting Canadian and American cattle on the slaughter line at plants won't be difficult. "Sorting Canadian or Mexican carcasses off the line will be no more difficult than sorting Certified Angus Beef, Certified Hereford Beef, Select, Choice or Primes," said an R-CALF press release.

Putting this in perspective, many American farmers see this as a big corporation-versus-farmer issue. Unfortunately, Canadian farmers are caught in the crossfire because their cattle are slaughtered in "big corporation" packing plants run by IBP and Cargill, on one side of the border or the other.

Ontario Pork is funding two projects to estimate the cost of COOL to the industry here, one jointly with Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta producers to be used in lobbying in the United States and another study through Ridgetown College that will examine the implications of COOL on Ontario's pork supply chain. BF

Stealing GM corn beats starving

In late January, an estimated 6,000 villagers overpowered an armed policeman in the village of Sizanongwe, 300 km from the capital of Lusaka. Looters stole 4,600 50-kg bags of corn, some of it GM and some non-GM, according to ABC News. Sizanongwe is in the Southern Province, the area hardest hit by drought. The villagers attacked the food depot after rumours spread that the corn was going to be returned to the capital. They also took beans, seed and scales donated by the international relief agency, World Vision.

Last summer, Zambia announced it was rejecting 40,000 tonnes of genetically-modified corn because of concerns that GM food would poison the population.

World Vision International says Africa is suffering from unprecedented food shortages affecting "a staggering 38 million people." In the six countries of Southern Africa -- Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique -- almost 15 million people are threatened by starvation.BF

The price of Quebec farmland heats up

The most recent statistics for all of Canada show that, from the beginning of March to the end of July 2002, the value of farmland increased by 2.6 per cent. During the same period, Quebec had an increase of 6.2 per cent.

The demand for land on which to spread manure has put pressure on prices, and Quebec's environmental legislation has played a part in this. In regions where hog production is concentrated, the Quebec Ministry of Environment requires that livestock producers who wish to expand their operations own sufficient land for the spreading of manure. This pressure continues to push up the price of land and, in some areas, has led to a marked increase in land being cleared of trees. The increased popularity of grain corn as a crop has also helped boost land prices.

For the last two years, land in south-central Quebec, where corn and hog production is concentrated, has been selling for an average of $9,800 a hectare, or $3,967 an acre. These are prices as reported by the Farm Credit Corporation and based on sales of about 40 farms between February 2001 and February 2002. The highest recorded transaction reached $13,725 a hectare, with the lowest being $6,043 a hectare. BF

Ontario feedlot failure puts custom feeders on notice

In late January, Deloitte and Touche took over the management of operations at Bender Beef Farms at Kippen. According to a statement of the receiver dated Jan. 29 and obtained in mid-February by Better Farming, the Bank of Montreal is the major creditor, with a secured interest of $8.534 million. Also with security on $750,000 worth of loans for crops is the Agricultural Credit Corporation.

Not so fortunate are 62 unsecured creditors, mostly local businesses, with claims totalling more than $1.47 million. The largest of these is W. G. Thompson and Sons with a claim of $300,000. An additional 13 creditors filed claims of "undetermined" value against Benders. At press time, reports indicated that the number of unsecured creditors was climbing. The "book value" of assets listed totalled $8.38 million.

Jim Clark, general manager of the Ontario Cattle Feeders Association predicts that repercussions from this failure will cross Canada, changing the relationship that producers have with their banks with respect to custom feeding of cattle. Bender Beef Farms, owned by John and Bradley Bender through their limited Ontario companies, was custom feeding cattle for other producers and disputes over ownership of cattle have ensued.

The confidence of investors is at risk, Clark says. Somehow as an industry we have to take a look at registering these cattle so that we know (their) ownership," he says. Investors won't put their money into cattle if they are worried that they will lose them to the feedlot operator's banker. The extensive list of creditors "goes to show how farming fits in the rural community and the effects when things go bad," he says.

At least feeder co-ops are safe, says Carm Hamilton, project manager, Ontario Feeder Cattle Loan Guarantee Program. Custom feeding is not allowed. BF

Developer finds common ground with farmers

Since 1988, local developer Donald Hearn has been trying to turn 198-acre Marshfield Woods, a Carolinian forest located near the town of Essex, into a golf course. The local municipality rezoned the property from its original agricultural status and fairways for the golf course have already been cut. However, the rezoning was taken before the OMB and on Dec. 30 the board ruled against the developer.

Here's the rub. A local environmental group had the Marshfield property evaluated using the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System, which determined that much of the wooded area constitutes a forested swamp. Local farmers are not happy that an outside party is able to determine what use can be made of private property.

The president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has asked the OMB to reconsider its decision. In a letter dated Feb. 5, president Ron Bonnett stated: "farmers face the unacceptable situation of learning after the fact that an outside party has achieved designation and zoning changes to his/her property. Farmers will then face permanent loss of use for such property without any compensation. The decision causes the theft of property rights." He warns that property owners "will potentially act to capitalize on property rights while still accessible, at the cost of environmentally significant or sensitive land."

That appears to be happening already. In a case also addressed in the Marshfield OMB decision, a neighbour adjacent to Marshfield Woods, Gary Chittle, had been refused permission to build a home in the woods on a retirement lot on the farm which he had severed for his two sons. Subsequent to the OMB decision, he cut down the woodlot.

"In the case of our neighbour, the woods that were never to be touched are losing a thousand trees," observes Hearn. "The environmentalists think they won. They lost. We all lost," Hearn says.

Tree cover, or the lack of it, is affecting land use issues in Essex in other ways. A plan by the Essex Region Conservation Authority to place a levy on agricultural land in order to raise money to buy farmland and put it into trees has raised widespread opposition.

The conservation authority has a plan to take 19,000 acres of farmland out of production and increase tree cover. The levy would cost $6.34 per taxpayer per year, and in the case of the town of Tecumseh, increase its budget by one per cent. The amount of county land that is treed is moot, but it certainly is low. In 2001, the county had 324,122 acres of farmland and more than 90 per cent of it was used to grow crops. BF

Rotting onions trumps livestock manure

"I've never smelled anything as bad as rotting vegetables," says the Bradford area sheep and beef farmer, "and onions are the worst." He has been fighting the dumping of waste from vegetable processing operations in his area for six years. Last fall, after a considerable amount of lobbying, Ontario's Ministry of the Environment (MOE) shut down two dumpsites near his farm, which is located between Guilford and Fennels Corners.

Don Grabowski, the MOE's senior environmental officer based in Barrie, says two dump sites operated by Cortale Haulage of Bradford were ordered shut last fall after earlier orders from provincial officers to put an approved nutrient management plan (NMP) in place "by a drop-dead deadline" were ignored.

Grabowski says he crafted an order based on proposed nutrient management regulations and personally delivered it. The order "makes the parts we borrowed out of (the Nutrient Management Act) immediately enforceable. It gives the NMP some legal justification. It also prescribes some things that go beyond the NMP," he says.

This was necessary, Grabowski says, because it remains unclear when the new Nutrient Management Act will come into place. The nutrient management plans have been developed and accepted by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. "I believe that the odour problems will not be what they used to be," Grabowski says, though he admits that not all the neighbours are happy. "That approach isn't sitting very well with a few folks," he says.

Roberts wants this material handled like it was liquid manure. "The water content is about the same and the odour is at least as bad. "I'm trying to work with the situation the best I can," says the angry farmer. "It is affecting our lives so much." BF

Mexicans have United States beaten at tracking livestock

"Today Mexico has a better system than we do," says Rhonda Skaggs, a New Mexico State University agricultural economist. Skaggs bases her comments on a study of live cattle imports to the United States through the Santa Teresa and San Jeronimo port of entry on the Mexican border. The port handles about 250,000 feeder animals a year, a quarter of the number that enter annually from Mexico. Most cattle go to feedlots in Texas, Colorado and the Midwest, but some travel as far as Oregon and Mississippi.

"We found that if the United States actually needed this cattle-tracking information, we'd be in a seriously poor situation," Skaggs says. Record keeping was inconsistent, writing illegible and, while truck drivers could find the rural feed yards, they weren't available on a standard geographic database.

Tracking livestock movements would be critical in the case of an outbreak of a virulent disease such as foot-and-mouth. Symptoms can take up to 60 days to appear after contact with infected animals.

So what will the Americans do? "The system in Chihuahua (Mexico) far surpasses anything we have in the United States and can be a model for us to attempt to develop," says state livestock board veterinarian Steve England. "When it comes to control of livestock movements in the advent of an act of bio-terrorism. Chihuahua has control and we do not." BF