August/September 2000
Report assails pesticide useBecause it was released at the same time as this year's problematic spring planting, the report on pesticides produced by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development was virtually ignored. To say that the report was unfriendly to the pesticide industry, or to conventional modern farming, would be an understatement.For our readers, from the press release on the report, we print the following excerpts: "The committee advised homeowners to quit spraying dandelions; they are harmless and beautify. They do not pose a threat to health. Pesticides do... "To farmers, we say there is a booming domestic and export market for organic foods. The advantages of organic farming are many: reduced soil erosion, retention of soil nutrients, surface and ground water that is uncontaminated by pesticides. We urge the government to enable farmers to take advantage of this economic opportunity by providing them with the necessary information, technical assistance and financial incentives." The report urged the government to re-evaluate all pesticides that were approved before 1995 "with today's more stringent standards" and to "de-register pesticides for which a safer alternative is now available." The report was also critical of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which it said "attempts to be the servant of two masters; namely meeting the needs of growers and pesticide manufacturers while protecting human health." The Canadian Federation of Agriculture says the report was not helpful. "Excessive recommendations to limit the use of pesticides in agriculture are likely to slow progress in developing improved farm practices," says the CFA's press release in response to the House of Commons report. CFA president Bob Friesen points out that farmers are already gaining ground on many of the issues that the report cites. "The report does not acknowledge day-to-day farm reality. Pesticide regulations should be adjusted gradually."
Eric Wolf, the "chicken man," who locked himself in a cage for a week in Ottawa a couple of years ago to protest the way that farmers treat poultry, has gone back to a cage, this time for fraud. Wolf, 27, was sent to jail for 60 days for his part in a scheme to defraud another man of his $2,633.90 in Super 7 Lottery Winnings in February, 1999. The crown prosecutor alleged that Wolf and another man promised to send a winner's signed ticket to the Ontario Lottery Corporation office in Toronto. They tore the signed portion off the ticket. Wolf then signed the back of the winning ticket himself before driving to Toronto to collect the money. Wolf was convicted of forgery and possession of stolen property. Wolf, who defended himself in court in Ottawa in June, declared he would appeal the decision. His alleged accomplice pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence in exchange for 200 hours of community service work.
For the truly green fanatics in Britain, resting in peace means a cardboard box in the woods. Your family and friends bring spades. The headstone is a tree planted over top. Now there's a bonus for British farmers who want to plant this type of crop. The Natural Death Centre, which encourages family-organized, environmentally friendly funerals, says a U.K. farmer can gross (no kidding) about C$2.4 million in seven years from running a seven-acre woodland grave property. Beats the heck out of soybeans and corn and you don't have to buy fertilizer next year. The total cost to the estate of the deceased is about $2,000, a fifth of the cost of a standard British funeral. Furthermore, there's no icky smoke from the crematorium. The Toronto Star reports that there are already 90 woodland burial sites in Britain since 1993 and 40 more are in development.
For the first time in recent memory, beef consumption and prices are rising at the same time. And pork and chicken are being eaten in greater quantities per capita. Meat is in style again, and the pundits are having a high old time explaining it. High protein diets that focus on steaks and salads are becoming very popular. The National Post credits the popularity of "The Zone" and "Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution" for boosting meat prices. The Post article linked the new food trend to the failing financial position of New World Pasta, the biggest U.S. producer of dried spaghetti. The Globe and Mail, on the other hand, connects the growing consumption of relatively high-priced meats to the unprecedented prosperity enjoyed by many North Americans. The theory of high disposable incomes would also account for the observation that sports utility vehicle owners ignore soaring fuel prices and continue to drive at gas-gulping speeds on Highway 401. Anne Dunford, senior market analyst at Canfax, in Calgary, agrees. Last year there were about six factors that were driving beef demand, she says, and the strong economy is number one. "Consumers were feeling confident about job security...They have money to burn and they are going to burn it." Dunford feels that another major factor in high beef demand is the new convenience products on the shelves. Pre-cooked, marinated roasts are ready to eat in seven minutes from the microwave. With new tenderizing techniques, chuck and hip ends are no longer as much of a drag on the market, she says. Branded products in Ontario have also boosted beef demand. "It's not a commodity product any more," she says. Diets come and go, she says. After years of negative reports, the change towards positive coverage in the Globe, and now the Post, is quite amazing, she says.
Every farmer knows about the high health status of Canadian livestock. It's given Canadians enviable access to foreign markets and helped a federal government with ambitious export goals. Exporters say an outbreak of diseases such as swine fever or pseudorabies in our swine population could be devastating. So could an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in any hoofed animal. This last happened in the 1960s and caused millions of dollars of losses even then. To keep disease out we have strict laws about what can be brought into this country. Inspections at points of entry are supposed to reassure our trading partners that we are serious about disease control. Alas, it seems the laws don't apply to everyone. In a recent Ottawa Citizen opinion piece, former Canadian diplomat Graham N. Green gleefully explains that diplomats can't be searched and recounts how this helped him smuggle sausages into Canada over the years from countries which any pig farmer would recognize as serious health threats to Canadian swine. Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) staff veterinarian Louise Carriere admits "diplomatic immunity" poses a special challenge for her agency which is responsible for enforcing food import laws. "So far we've had good cooperation," she observes. Carriere says the CFIA was unaware of Green's column until inquiries were made by Better Farming. She says any action against the ex-diplomat would have to come from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who have now been notified. "I hope the statute of limitations on sausage smuggling has long since expired," Green said in his column. The question remains: is Mr. Green a bigger threat to farmers in his former occupation as a diplomat-smuggler or in his current status as a member of the Citizen's editorial board where he gets to influence public opinion about laws which protect the food system?
Chicken Farmers of Ontario (CFO) is taking the Farm Products Marketing Commission to a higher authority to complain about changes the commission has ordered to the marketing system in the province. The complaints to the Farm Products Appeal Tribunal may be held in two stages. On September 8, the Tribunal is scheduled to begin a hearing to decide whether the Commission has the jurisdiction to make the type of changes it has ordered. There are concerns over process -- whether the CFO was given proper notice, whether farmers had an opportunity to be heard, and also whether there was bias against chicken farmers in the decision. If the Tribunal finds that the Commission had proceeded properly, a hearing on the effects of the commission's decision on the industry will be conducted at a later date. Last winter, the Farm Products Marketing Commission ordered CFO to revamp its marketing scheme completely. Chairman Tom Posthuma and the rest of the board were not impressed. CFO powers would be greatly reduced. The chicken board would no longer be involved in deciding how much chicken would be produced. It would take orders from all the companies and then ask the national body for an allocation to fill the perceived demand. Chicken growers would no longer have any say in pricing either. According to the commission's scheme, farmers would receive a margin over a cost of production formula.
BASF says it is in the crop protection business for the long haul, after purchasing Cyanamid Crop Protection from American Home Products. With the combined resources, BASF plans to launch 15 new active ingredients in the next six years. Jay Bradshaw, the new Business Director of Agricultural Products for Canada, says sales, marketing and research will be integrated soon. "Our goal is to have a single face in the Canadian marketplace by fall," explains Bradshaw. Globally, BASF will now rank in the top three crop protection companies. In Canada, BASF boats that it ranks as the number one provider, based on sales in the core markets. With the Cyanamid purchase, its North American and global biotechnology capabilities are doubled. BASF says its next generation biotechnology is aiming at improved plant traits that will benefit both growers and consumers. BF
June/July 2000 Chicken wings take offWhen Simcoe chicken producer Jim Judge started farming two decades, poultry farmers used to joke that the chickens they raised should have four legs and no wings. They were as useless to the farmer and the processors as they were to the flightless birds.Now, so to speak, the shoe is on the other foot. Chicken farmers, and processors for that matter, would love it if every chicken had four wings. Legs, as the jokes go, would be optional. It's a lesson in the fickleness of consumer markets, or perhaps in the skill of those doing the marketing. For now, says Judge, president of Farm Fresh Co-operative, wings are the hottest things around. The dark meat in legs is a drag on the market. Robert Devalk, CEO of the Further Poultry Processors Association of Canada, says the wings craze came out of the United States, then was fuelled by a company in Niagara Falls, Canada, which flogged them in roadhouses before the succulent saucy morsels took on a marketing life of their own. Now the average Canadian eats more wings than does the average American. It's resulted in a supply shortage north of the border which is supplemented with American imports. But the fast food chains still can't get enough. Devalk says that there have been cases where chains devoted to chicken wings went bankrupt because they created so much demand for chicken wings that the raw material was priced out of their reach.
The development of short-season corn heat units (CHUs) is moving right along. Pioneer Hi-Bred recently announced a renewed commitment to short-season corn development. But growers can't count on consistent corn and soybean crops in the north yet, says Rowsell. "Taking off corn silage and seeing it as a repeatable event is still a while away." His message: don't expect to move from Oxford County to Earlton and grow the same crops. The last decade has seen a trend in increased heat units in the north. Rowsell notes that New Liskeard is just shy of heat comparable with Verner, about 100 miles south. But he warns that the huge volcanic eruption of Penatubo in 1991 makes the trend look bigger than it actually is. Penatubo's eruption spewed clouds of dust that resulted in an exceptionally cold year in 1992, when corn crops in southern Ontario failed to mature. Rowsell says the cold year in 1992 and the three warm years lately "make a striking trend." "We may be over-estimating the extent to which it is getting warmer" in the north, he says. Past North Bay, with the exceptional forage yields that are consistently taken off fields there, he questions why farmers would bother with corn. The CHUs in the chart (above) shouldn't be used to compare New Liskeard directly with another area, Rowsell says. There isn't a 30-year history of frost-free days to back up the growing day calculations, he says. He thinks that the chart likely overestimates CHUs by 300 to 400 in any given year.
The test will cost less than $10 a head. The OARDC has already applied for a patent on the technology. Francis Fluharty, a feedlot nutritionist, says that widespread use of the technology could eliminate non-tender beef in about 10 years. The DNA test will allow cattle to be sorted into "outcome groups." Breeders, he says, won't dare to sell a bull that doesn't rank high on a tenderness index. Meat scientist Ira Mandell of the University of Guelph's department of animal and poultry science is more cautious. The search for tenderness, he says, shouldn't be done at the expense of traits for growth, calving ease and milk production -- all important to the beef industry. Furthermore, he argues, the marbling only accounts for part of the variation that occurs in tenderness. He points to work in Clay Center, Nebraska, which shows that lean cattle can be as tender as those carrying lots of fat. The Ohio research, by the way, was funded by the U.S. Certified Angus Beef Program.
Last December, in response to hearings in the fall, the commission ordered the CFO to develop an implementation plan that would drastically change the way chicken is marketed. Farmers would get a price based on a margin over their costs. The total amount of chicken produced would be determined by asking the processors what they needed, totaling up the orders, and then presenting the total to Chicken Farmers of Canada, the national agency. This is the approach that processors want to see. At press time, it wasn't clear what was in the CFO plan sent to the farm products marketing commission. But a copy of the commission's reply made its way to a Better Farming fax machine. The commission was unimpressed with the CFO's implementation plan, and said that it seemed to have been developed without consulting other stakeholders in the chicken industry. The commission laid down the gauntlet again, ordering that a mechanism for formula-based live chicken pricing, developed in concert with processors, be completed by May 16. So far, CFO officials have refused to comment on the commission's order.
Now what's in the cards? But before the ink was dry on magazines coming off the presses, the gambling issue took another turn. The province changed its regulations to allow Ontario's 18 racetracks to become full-blown charity casinos complete with gaming tables. The tracks at Sarnia and Windsor are expected to make the move. But the new Grand River Raceway planned for Elora is cleared only for slot machines. Before any track can adopt a charity casino, it must hold a public referendum. Considering the opposition Elora residents raised to the slot machines/race track, it seems unlikely that a charity casino would pass muster. Bram Hollman, a councilor in Woolwich Township, Waterloo Region, has branded the slot machines a cash grab by the province. This issue blew up because Elmira Raceway felt that it couldn't compete with other tracks, where purses were supplemented with slot money. It remains to be seen if the new Grand River Raceway, still in the planning stages, will have any better luck in future against competing racetracks further supplemented with money garnered from gaming tables. The slot machines, it appears, were the first step onto a slippery slope.
By then, NDP Treasurer Floyd Laughren was known as "Pink Slip Floyd" by OMAF employees who saw a bleak future ahead. Still, Burak promised to keep an agricultural representative in each of the 52 county offices, reported the Feb 8 issue of Farm & Country magazine. Fast forward to 2000. Rita Burak is retiring this month after five years as the Secretary to the Privy Council, a role she undertook after the Mike Harris Tories took office. In that time, a sea change has taken place. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs has taken on more responsibilities but has less money to work with. The budget is now just over $300 million. Ag reps are gone, as are the county ag offices. In anticipation of Burak's retirement as the low-profile but most powerful civil servant in the province, Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson wrote that early on in his days in power, Premier Harris assembled the deputy ministers of the province and told them that they were to report directly to Burak, not to their ministers. Burak, in turn, reported to Harris. Recently Ibbitson wrote that Burak has been "obsessed" with forward planning for the province, looking decades into the future. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that office, looking over Burak's shoulder at her plans for a ministry that serves agriculture.
The study is being undertaken by a newly formed Biotechnology Advisory Committee formed by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. The project, which is intended to discuss the ethical as well as technical implications of developing the technology, will take two years. Its 38-member panel includes scientists, consumer advocates, seed company executives and farmers. The technology was developed by Monsanto, which killed its deployment last winter. BF |