$3 billion isn't peanuts for U.S. farmers

"You've got to be kidding," says Mike Columbus, new crop development specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Ontario is the only Canadian province that grows peanuts and Columbus estimates that production here totals about 300 acres a year. He says that most of the product is sold from farms in a "value-added form" such as candy-coated peanuts, chocolate-coated peanuts, and peanut brittle.

Ernie Racz, owner of Kernal Peanuts Ltd. of Vittoria, near Simcoe, is just as incredulous, but his astonishment quickly changes to dripping sarcasm. "I'm going to assume that our government is going to match that subsidy with all the peanut farmers here. They usually give us money all the time. I'm waiting. It should be here any day," he says.

Racz used to track imports and exports of peanut products in Canada as well as protection programs for growers in the United States. He says that about 10 years ago he gave up.

In the 1980s, Ontario was trying to develop a peanut growing industry on former tobacco farms. It never took off. Producers charged that American subsidy programs protect American peanut farmers and flood foreign markets with cheap peanuts.

Back to the Farm Bill. As well as the 10-year entitlement of direct cash payments, the American government proposes to offer $1.3 billion to buy out farmers owning peanut quotas. Selling quota would allow American farmers to continue to grow the peanuts and take part in the subsidization programs, The Times said. BF

Subsidy critics under attack

Now the EWG itself is under attack. The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, based in the state of Washington, says it has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the EWG, citing "serious violations of the tax laws governing non-profit organizations." It charges that the EWG "has violated its tax status by unlawfully engaging in excessive lobbying and politicking.... We believe that the EWG's tax exemption should be revoked immediately Among other charges, it says EWG pressured former Vice-President Al Gore during his run for the presidency in 2000, receiving a $1.6 million grant to lobby the 2002 Farm Bill and lobbying in the California legislature for a year without a license.

The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise describes itself as "a non-partisan education and research organization which works on free enterprise studies, public policy research, book publishing, conferences, white papers, and media outreach." Contributions to this organization are tax-deductible. BF

CFIA cries foul over toxin charges

Eli Neidert, CFIA's national manager for chemical residues, says the EDC obtained data on CFIA foot testing using access-to-information requests and then put them on their website. However, the data are presented in such a way, he says, that it appears that virtually every sample of food tested has something wrong with it. "You get the impression that there is never a sample with nothing in it. That's very misleading."

Deidert says the CFIA has challenged the EDC about the information on the website. At press time, the controversial website, which had featured the CFIA information under the heading "Toxic tracker," was no longer accessible.

Neidert says the CFIA performs 360,000 laboratory tests on 27,000 samples of food annually. "In any one year, it's not unusual to find a few problems in that amount of tests," he says. Furthermore, he says the importance attached to the finding of trace contaminants "may have been overblown."

For example, he says, there were ionophores found in some eggs tested a few years ago. However, ionophores are antibiotic agents used to promote growth and not "hormones," as stated by the EDC. Detected levels were "one to six parts per billion. That's billion with a B."

Neidert concedes that ionophores are not labelled for use in feed for laying hens, but rather for broiler chickens, so it is likely that some feed was cross-contaminated at the mill.

On the maple syrup issue, Neidert states that lead and paraformaldehyde "are naturally present in the product." In the past, both lead and and paraformaldehyde have been found in maple syrup because of techniques and materials used in its production. Lead was known to leach from old fashioned galvanized cooking pans and paraformaldehyde pellets were used for a time to prevent tree bark from closing up around a tap hole. Neidert says use of the pellets was never approved by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and stainless steel is now largely used in syrup operations.

Before January 29, 2002 the EDF was known as the Canadian Environmental Defense Fund (CEDF). The CEDF gives credit for financial assistance from two sources, the Metcalf Foundation and the Laidlaw Foundation.

Cedric Metcalf founded the Metcalf Foundation. For many years he was president and managing director of George Weston Ltd and Loblaws. When he died he left the foundation with a substantial $110 million in assets. In 2000, the Metcalf Foundation gave CEDF $60,000 "towards projects on toxic substances in food" and also $250,000 to "Bird Studies Canada" at Port Rowan, Ont., to build a headquarters and research centre. BF

Lest we forget

Earlier this year Cathy Lennon, general manager of the Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency, was part of a 17-member Canadian contingent to visit Europe and conduct its own post mortem of the handling of the outbreak. "When you look more carefully at the circumstances," she says, "I think they did a pretty good job."

First, three quarters of the United Kingdom's vets are trained to deal with small animals. Until they were seconded to put down livestock by the hundreds, they typically "had dealt with nothing larger than a Great Dane."

Second, Britain's rendering capacity totaled 15,000 tonnes of material a week. With the foot-and-mouth outbreak, the 10,000 tonnes of dead animals a day needed to be disposed of.

Third, Britain was home to 40 million sheep, compared to 110 million sheep in the entire European Union. By contrast, Canada is home to between 800,000 and one million sheep.

Lennon says there were 26 confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth in Holland and 270,000 animals were slaughtered on 2,650 farms. Dutch authorities froze all the carcasses and stored them until rendering capacity was available. Many carcasses are still in cold storage. Holland turned back all animals from the United Kingdom and Ireland after the outbreak was announced and tested pigs in all hog operations.

Foot-and-mouth made its way into Holland through infected veal calves shipped via Ireland and France. The Dutch authorities believe that the pre-emptive slaughter eliminated the risk of spread.

Ironically, in Holland, slaughter figures show pigs were least affected by the disease because swine operators run strict biosecurity operations. In Britain, the farmer accused of feeding food scraps from a foreign ship to his pigs, thought to be the source of the FMD outbreak, is facing 18 charges, Lennon says. BF

Co-operator firings spark uproar

"The Co-operator is almost an institution in Manitoba," says Chuck Forsay, vice-president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers, Manitoba's main farm lobby group. "I know a lot of producers are going to be very upset."

"I've already cancelled my subscription," says Andy Baker, a grain and oilseeds grower in Beausejour, northeast of Winnipeg. Baker said he heard an Agricore United official being interviewed on CBC Radio Noon the day after the firings. "He said it was a business decision. It was radio but I could still see his nose growing. It's almost laughable. You make a business decision, you let all your award-winning reporters go and you expect your paper to survive."

Lat year the Co-operator turned a profit of $636,000 - compared to $604,000 the previous year. Farm Business Communications operating profit decreased seven per cent to $1.4 million, due to decreases in advertising and circulation revenues.

Baker was a member of Agricore and his equity in their co-op was converted into shares in Agricore United when the two entities amalgamated last year. Baker now wonders if he should have hung on to them. "When petty politics overrides good business it kind of makes you nervous about having shares in a company like that. The Co-operator reported (fairly). It wasn't biased." He thinks reporting is biased in The Grainews, the other UGG paper which covers the same market.

The Co-operator published local and international news on a weekly basis. The Grainews, on the other hand, only publishes 15 or 16 times a year, Forsay said.

Palmer Anderson, managing director of Farm Business Communications, who had been interviewed by Radio Noon, allowed that the new editor of the Co-operator is Andy Sirski, who edits the other publications, but would not answer other questions about the changes. BF

Is $275,000 in subsidies enough?

The environmental group wants Washington to quit subsidizing production and start propping up green farms. It was the tales of "millionaire farmers reaping big profits at taxpayer expense," said the Washington Post, that inspired Democrat Byron Dorgan from North Dakota to launch legislation to cap the amount of money farms can get from federal programs.

Dorgan was reported to favour lowering the annual limit on crop subsidies to individual farmers to $275,000 from $460,000 and tightening eligibility rules to fill loopholes. He argues that the largest producers need the money the least and that it should be aimed at family farms.

One might think that $275,000 is plenty of money, but it's not. Arkansas senators are complaining because their farmers operate on a large scale and will get hurt. Midwestern farmers are complaining for the same reason. Midwestern grain-growing states got the lion's share of the federal largesse. Also fighting the cap is the American Farm Bureau Federation, which claims to be the largest farm organization in the country.

The National Farmers Union (no connection to the Canadian NFU), which says it represents 300,000 family farms, supports Dorgan's amendment, arguing that supporting large farms just increases consolidation. Solidarity forever?BF

Recreation may win over farming -- again

Uses of the river are under discussion and may be changed drastically. Early this year, the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences released a startling report on behalf of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The report says the Army Corps of Engineers should reverse decades of channelizing and river straightening and bring back the old meanders and bends which had removed more than 200 miles from the river's length.

The Corps of Engineers is examining a number of options. One is to leave things as they are. Most controversial is a call from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to invoke a seasonal plan to mimic mountain snowmelt by making the river surge to especially high levels every three years and fall to low levels every summer. The low levels should increase shore bird habitat and the Wildlife Service insists that this is the only way to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act.

The Missouri is now held back by a series of six huge dams that provide flood control and also feed water steadily into barge channels. With lower water flows in the summer, barge transportation would be impaired. Based strictly on economics, the environmentalists might win this one. The recreation industry claims that it contributes ten times as much to the economy along the river as does barge traffic.

Oh well, the Brazilians are taking over world soybean markets anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Might as well go fishing.BF

Fridges growing out of hedgerows

The Daily Telegraph in Britain blames the phenomenon on an overzealous European Union. Back in 1987 an international agreement was signed to get rid of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) blamed for damaging the ozone layer, and the EU was apparently anxious to set a good example. New products using CFCs were banned starting in 1995 and Jan. 1, 2002, and specific measures for disposal of old CFC products came into force.

CFCs are also in the foam insulation as well as in the cooling systems of fridges and it takes a special processing plant to deal with the foam. Britain doesn't have such a plant yet, but one is under construction. So you have refrigerators growing out of hedgerows as consumers get rid of them illegally rather than pay a fee to appliance dealers, who aren't required to take them away until 2004.

The Telegraph cited cases of farmers being instructed to turn the old refrigerators onto their doors so that children didn't become trapped inside, and to cover them with tarps, storing them until local councils can come and take them away. Councils have been given the equivalent of $14 million to pay for storage, about a month's worth, at current levels. Britons throw away three million fridges annually. In the meantime, local councils are charging farmers as much as $35 a fridge to haul them away.BF

VIV show offers international exposure

Exhibitors covering all aspects of pork and poultry production and processing will be on hand, says Rosemary Smart, international marketing program co-ordinator with the association.

John Bancroft, president of the Ontario Pork Congress, is confident that the VIV, which focuses on products and services available on the international market, will not hurt the Pork Congress, which is aimed at exhibitors marketing specifically into Ontario.

Admission and parking at the VIV show are free, but visitors are asked to pre-register at: www.viv.net or by calling (519) 421-0997, or by filling out a registration form available from industry representatives. BF

Clear path for Roundup Ready soys

The OOPSCC agreement was a foregone conclusion. The same week, the Ontario Soybean Exporters Association agreed, by a vote of 17 to 14, to variety registration and sale in 2003.

Some companies feel they can take advantage of this technology while others feel they can't, says Horst Bohner, an Ontario agriculture ministry soybean specialist and chairman of the OOPSCC.

The issue of Roundup Ready soybeans has been contentious in Ontario for several years. The key question was whether registration of RR white hilum soybeans would hurt export markets where genetically modified products are unacceptable. In the past, white hilums were a clear signal that biotechnology was absent and a gentlemen's agreement had been in place to leave this new technology on the shelf.

Meanwhile white hilum Roundup Ready soybean production had gone ahead in the United States and markets haven't abandoned them. Approval by the exporters is considered a clear signal that Ontario's Identity Preserved (IP) system works.

The gentlemen's agreement stays in place for this year. Three new varieties will be marketed in 2003 by First Line, Dow-Agro and Soy Genetics. A fourth variety, from Advantage, was held back until some agronomic issues were worked out. This year, the Roundup Ready seed will be multiplied. BF

What the feds call "consultation"

In mid-February, pork producers found themselves in receipt of a 21-page questionnaire, a document that one producer complained took an entire day to fill out. Delivering the document was a Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspector.

Catherine Scovil, executive associate with the Canadian Pork Council, explains that with one hand the CFIA is involved in "consultations" with livestock industries over the proposals to place strong controls on anyone who mixes medication into feeds, whether on-farm or commercially. The other hand is acting as if the controversial regulations were already in place.

"It is definitely confusing," Scovil told Better Farming. "Producers know there are discussions about the proposed regulations and understand that these regulations are not finalized. All of a sudden they are getting a questionnaire that has a lot of elements of the proposal in it.

Scovil says CFIA officials see the stepped up inspections "as an opportunity to get the producers they were going to be visiting to speed up on the proposed regulations. I'm not sure it's had quite that effect."

Judy Thompson, feed evaluation coordinator, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Ottawa, says the hue and cry a year over the regulations came from "a number of the grassroots farmers that, I guess, hadn't been informed by their industry group that these things were going to happen ...

"I don't think we are at the stage where we are looking at whether or not we need regulations. We are just looking at how they should look and how they will work."

And where does the Canadian Pork Council stand on this? Scovil says the CPC wants the CFIA to spread its resources further. Medication in feeds that may end up in meat isn't the toughest food safety issue out there, Scovil says. "We certainly don't oppose control on the mixing of medicated feed. We don't support the regulatory approach. We spent a lot of time, money and resources on the implementation of an on-farm food safety program that covers the mixing of medicated feed. BF