by SUSAN MANN
Ontario environmental commissioner Gord Miller plans to meet with Grain Farmers of Ontario officials at their request so they can hear and discuss his concerns about neonicotinoids and to tell him about their continued efforts to protect pollinators.
Hayley Easto, communications and outreach coordinator with the commissioner’s office, confirmed today “the meeting will happen.” But they’re still working out the details.
In an Oct. 8 press release, Grain Farmers of Ontario says it’s disappointed by Miller’s comments Tuesday in releasing his annual report to the legislature about neonicotinoids being a bigger threat to Ontario’s ecosystem than DDT.
“It is perplexing that his remarks would jump to this judgment especially when there is no mention of it in the formal report or in his initial address to media,” Grain Farmers chair Henry Van Ankum says in the release, and calls Miller’s comment “irresponsible.”
“The report only summarized the concerns and issues that we have heard before and we are already working on those,” he says.
Barry Senft, Grain Farmers CEO, says in the release its disappointing Miller’s comments “call into question our world-renowned regulatory system. Neonicotinoids went through years of rigorous testing before being approved by the PMRA (Pest Management Regulatory Agency). If there were any similarities to DDT, neonicotinoid-based products would not have been permitted into the marketplace.”
The Grain Farmers release also touched on the ways its members and the industry are addressing pollinator protection.
For example, Grain Farmers members have willingly adhered to new best management practices during this year’s growing season, “which early indications show were successful in helping to lower the number of bee death incidents” reported to the PMRA this spring, it says.
In addition, Grain Farmers has participated in research on dust reduction that has “prompted an industry-wide look into planter modifications,” the release says. Grain Farmers has also supported additional research into the responsible use of neonicotinoids, including an analysis of the presence of soil pests in Ontario.
Given those efforts by farmers, their industry partners and public researchers, Grain Farmers says it is extremely disappointed by Miller’s comments Tuesday. BF
See related story
Ontario’s environmental commissioner calls for neonic phase out
Comments
Grain farmers have done nothing to help curb the use of Neonic's and they have done next to nothing to spread the word to farmers about how to properly work around bee's, its insane that as farmers we can go out and purchase seed with these types of treatments on them with zero knowledge of their toxicity or ingredients with out having to take some sort of annual course or safety training to educate ourselves about their potential harm. Every industry has mandatory safety training, just recently myself and all my staff took work place safety training and are enrolled in an upcoming fork lift training course because we want to be proactive and ensure we are doing thing correctly, i am huge supporter of mandatory lic for farmers using and buying treated seed.
Sean McGivern
PFO
I guess this is the kind of uneducated nonsense and drivel that gets spewed by some one who is an organic grower and who does not have and has never taken a recent grower pesticide safety course .
What is a pesticide safety course going to do for you? You buy the pretreated seeds and stick them in the ground, 20% of the neurotoxin goes up the plant and the rest of it stays in the ground where it contaminates rivers, streams, Lakes and everything else. That’s the whole problem.
If it stays in the ground why are we so worked up about killing the bee's ?
These toxins are water soluble which makes them mobile, they end up polluting rivers and streams and taken up by non-target plants only to produce poison nectar and pollen.
Your comment are rather uneducated and misinformed, because I am a conventional grain grower and i spray for weeds as needed, and I always order my seed untreated, and have never had a crop failure and that is because i have good long crop rotation, however any one can walk into the local feed and seed retailer and buy a bag of treated seed and do with it as they please and they are not required to take any pesticide training course to do so.
Sean McGivern
So now you want the genaral public to take the course because those are the people you are talking about . Not the same as a farmer . They can even order their seed online .
As a farmer you do not have to take the grower pesticide course if you get your chemicals applied by a custom applicator .
How many of your employees have taken the course ?
Sorry you could not make organic farming work . Although you still work the system to make money even though you are not up to the organic task .
What happened , did you loose your certification ? or just get caught trying to pull a sly one ?
If you did take the course this spring you would know where you are wrong in your answer and misinformed .
I recently had all of my employees take the mandated worker health and safety training, because i want my workers and their work environment to be safe and for them and for them to have the skills needed to do their job safely.
I farm 2,000 acres because of the size of my operation it became to difficult to farm that many acres spread over a vast area and do the best possible job required to be a successful organic grower.
It is very difficult to farm more then 500 acres organically in the stoney heavy soil i have to work with in my region, so i opted out of organic production at this time so i could spend more time helping my mum through her cancer struggles.
I find there are several people on here who always want to remain nameless and attact people rather then debate the actual issues, this leads me to believe they have some thing to hide, when they make rude comments and can't sign their posts, or make foolish assumptions.
There is no worker training or farmer training to safely handle treated seed, most farmer hire their spraying done as do we, and so their for we would not be enrolled in a pesticide course, I think their should be a mandatory lic system for farmers wanting to buy treated seed.
We have never used treated seed and have zero intentions to ever use it, i believe there are way to many opportunities to handle it in an unsafe manor just think how many farmers have used their bare hands to scoop a little treated seed from one end of the drill to the other to finish the last pass in a field and didn't have gloves or some way to wash it off right away.
Life is way to short to screw with your health.
Sean McGivern
PFO
I am and was correct that you have not taken or passed the grower pesticide safety course but seem to remain an expert on it and the content of .
Nough said !!
The grower pesticide safety course (GPSC) is generally considered (except by people who believe that anonymous opinions matter) to be such a "mickey-mouse" course that it's dangerous to accord extensive wisdom to those who have passed it, and who have no other basis for their understanding of the subject matter.
Therefore, for example, it is entirely possible, and even likely, for someone who has a University degree in biology or crop science, but who has not taken the GPSC, to know more about the subject than someone whose knowledge starts, and ends, with the GPSC.
Furthermore, it's entirely possible for people who have not passed the grower pesticide safety course to buy whatever herbicides and pesticides they want to buy - for example, custom sprayers obtain a Pesticides Operator Licence which, after passing one test once, allows then to never have to (as of yet) write any further tests ever again. There's still a requirement to re-register and pay a fee every year, but no re-testing is required.
Therefore, it is entirely inappropriate to cast aspersions on someone who does not have a valid GPSC but who expresses opinions about herbicides because, as always, and as pointed out in the two examples above, there is more than one way to "skin a cat" (or an anonymous poster).
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Yep, "who expresses opinions " sums it up quite well! Thanks for your opinion!
As usual, and as always, the "wit" triplets, dim, nit, and half, continue to demontrate that this site is the ideal forum for anonymous fools to prove that:
(1) they don't know what they are talking about
(2) they have nothing to say
(3) sarcasm should never be used anonymously
(4) sarcasm shouldn't ever be used by people not smart enough to use it well
This Thanksgiving, I give thanks to those relatively-few posters with the moral and ethical integrity to willingly sign their names to their postings, and a pox on all the sarcastic knuckle-dragging morons who don't.
I also give thanks to those consumers who quite-appropriately choose to thumb their noses at supply management by serving Thanksgiving ham instead.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I won't be a bully, like some on this blog but it is your choice if you want to spend more to eat ham rather than turkey.
On this site, as everywhere else in life, the morons among us, particularly the anonymous morons, can't seem to be able to respond coherently, intelligently, and/or without trying to shift the blame for their inability to respond intelligently onto someone else.
For example, when somebody gives thanks to those who have the moral fibre to sign their names when posting on this site and or to avoid eating turkey this thansgiving in a small, yet meaningful protest against the wretched excesses foisted on everyone by supply management, the best these anonymous wretches can do is make a feeble attempt try to claim that their anonymity is superior to somebody else's bullying, yet completely ignoring the point that anonymity is the ultimate form of bullying.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Give your head a shake.
Your little pet peeve will not be a factor for shoppers.
Ask yourself how many consumers think about SM when they are choosing between ham and turkey?
My estimate would be about 0.0001 %
A few farmers but almost zero consumers.
They will choose based on taste preference, tradition or price.
If price is the issue - it will be turkey.
Ham has become the new food of the rich and famous not the poor consumer.
At a $1.99/Ib. Turkey will be flying off the store shelves.
How can this be?
Our resident economist would have us believe that Pork is in the poor house and that SM turkey is far more expensive. Furthermore, our resident economist will not admit that the Valco real estate study has both SM and Intensive livestock as the main ones bidding up the price of land.
Yep, totally sinks Mr.Thompsons Battleship Re: SM being the only sector with enough of a war-chest capable of bidding up land prices. Apparently, Intensive Livestock operators are doing the same thing.
If the latest twisted logic from this site's nattering nabobs of negativism is to be believed, we need to keep supply management because otherwise intensive livestock farmers would be running away with land purchases - given that:
(1) dairy and chicken farms are, by definition, intensive livestock farms
(2) supply management has a definitional "war chest" advantage over everyone because of 200% tariff barriers available to them alone
This "grasping at straws" argument is definitionally indentical to the argument circulating in the pre-civil war US south which was - "we need to keep slavery because otherwise everybody in Mississippi would be poor".
Unfortunately, the shallowness of, and inherent desperation of, all of this site's anonymous postings attempting to defend supply management, speaks volumes about the inevitability that supply managed farmers will fight like cornered rats to keep it - and it also speaks volumes about the inevitability that supply management will eventually be torn to pieces by non-supply managed farmers who've simply had enough of supply management's arrogance and bullying.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Comment will be published if resubmitted and signed.
Given that Mr. Thompson now agrees that Pork is more expensive for the poor to eat than turkey, plus has chosen not to comment on the fact that both SM plus Intensive Livestock are the two primary farm land inflating bidders named in the Valco study, speaks volumes that both are equally guilty of bidding up the price of land.
Blurb, blurb, blurb there goes another battleship, in fact it would appear the whole fleet is sinking.
Oh come on now . It should be 100 lashes along with the sinking ship !
Not only can he not twist and play boo who shoot the messenger he must now buck up and take the heat .
Yes not to far away the prok guys are still buying farms . 3 million dollars for less than 200 acres . Hard times indeed with their war chest !!
It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which anonymous posters who are, by definition, bullies of the most-cowardly kind, couldn't pass even the most basic test in economics, or even the most-basic test in common sense.
Supply management has had forty years in which to continually bully other farmers and to hose Canadian consumers in a way in which US consumers aren't hosed.
Pork farmers, on the other hand, hose nobody - if imported pork was any less expensive than Canadian pork, we'd be eating imported pork, and Canadian pork farmers be damned. Furthermore, if consumers don't want to pay for pork, they can buy chicken (even at the usurious prices commanded by supply management) fish, lamb, or even stay meatless in their diet. Milk and egg purchasers can't do that because for these products, there are no effective substitutes.
More importantly, if the anonymous rabble on this site truly believed the nonsense they are posting, any of them could easily get into the non-quota hog business, but they won't.
In addition, the anonymous and nattering nabobs of negativism on this site completely forget that hog farmers have been out-gunned, out-bid and out-muscled for land at every turn for the entire tenure of supply management, and as well, in recent years have also had to endure the punishment dished out by ethanol.
Therefore, the only hog farmers left are, by definition, the best-and-brightest and therefore, have every right to finally enjoy the purchasing power which has been available to even the dumbest supply-managed farmer for four decades. Naturally, this newly-enjoyed purchasing power is, as in all capitalist ventures, often all-too-fleeting, and there's a strong chance that hog farmers will be in hard times once again, and that supply managed farmers will, unless there's a long-overdue revolution in the farm community, continue to hose consumers and be the true financial bullies in the farm community.
Or, to look at things from a managerial accounting perspective, the nattering nabobs of negativism on this site are using a "snap-shot" or balance-sheet examination of an isolated period of purchasing power for hog farmers to try to twist things in their favour, instead of looking at a much-longer time period and thereby get a more-accurate representation of reality by viewing the income-statement aspect of things.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Yes yes yes , the snap shot of an isolated period goes back as far as Sm has .
Once again refer back to the Valco study for dummies and then look back to recent history such as the time frame of when SM came to be . Hog farmers have raped the system of adhoc and unfair subsidies over their US competitors for decades . So in reality it is the G&O farmer who has been shafted here in Ontario for decades !
Actually, since the advent of the legislated use of ethanol, grains and oilseeds farmers have been raping and pillaging hog farmers, and not the other way around.
In addition, if hog farming has been so-consistently profitable, why then did so many hog farmers take the so-called "buy-out" and leave the business completely?
Furthermore, when the anonymous rabble falls all overthemselves to claim hog farmers are buying farms now, why don't they do some searching and find out that a good number of these hog farmers are now simply buying back land that they were forced to sell several years ago?
No matter how one looks at it, supply management and ethanol have been the one-two sucker punch which has completely-hammered any sort of non-dairy, and non-chicken form of livestock farming in Canada.
In addition, there's no amount of carping and fact-twisting any anonymous twit on the site can do which will make anyone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size believe that hog farmers are a bigger threat to peace, order, and equality in the farm community than supply management and ethanol.
Come on people, really, is anonymous and brainless exactly the same thing?
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The point you keep denying is that both SM and Intensive Livestock farms are BOTH named in the current Valco study as being the primary culprits in bidding up land values. Both are named, therefore, since you currently condemn SM for bidding up the price of land, then Intensive Livestock operations are also equally guilty of same. Bottom line, your dog doesn’t hunt anymore and your battleship plus your fleet is sunk.
When I last heard Ryan Parker from Valco, in, I believe, 2011, supply mangement was the only culprit driving the price of land into the stratosphere in Huron, Perth, and Oxford counties. Hogs and livestock were so far off the radar thanks to ethanol and the lingering effects (livestock) of BSE, they weren't even a factor at all.
Yet, certain members of the anonymous rabble on this site would have people even dumber than they are (if that's at all possible) believe that one year's worth of farm sales data invalidates 40 years of supply management's unquestioned ability to rape and pillage other sectors of the farm community with complete impunity.
To have the best hog farmers on a purchasing power par (for now, and for once in forty years) with even the most-mediocre supply managed farmer is, I suggest, the ideal time to get rid of supply management because government can simply suggest to dairy and poultry farmers carping about the income they'll lose - "since you're all complaining about how much money hog farmers are making, and about how much they're driving up the price of land, go into hogs"
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I made no claim, suggestion, or even inference that pork cost less than turkey, either this weekend, or at any time, and for anyone to suggest I did, is dead-outright-wrong, as the anonymous "turkeys" on this site always are.
I did, however, give thanks to those people who are choosing ham instead of turkey this Thanksgiving because it helps pork farmers who've been behind the eight ball for ten years, and hurts supply managed farmers who don't know what hard times even are.
It is interesting, yet sad, to note that supply management supporters on this site have become what former US Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, called the press - "nattering nabobs of negativism" because like the press did then, the anonymous supply management supporters on this site fall all over themselves now to pick an insignificant point in somebody else's signed posting, twist it completely out of the context in which the statement was originally used, and then flail madly about claiming that, in some way understandable only to them, that I am wrong.
It's like this my anonymous supply management-loving, extremely-obtuse and obviously thin-skinned friends - supply management screws consumers and bullies other farmers 365 days a year, and therefore, thanks and even praise should be given to anyone who, even in the most-insignifiant way, turns the tables on supply managed farmers even if for only one day out of 365, and that day is today.
As for me, I'm going to my neighbour's place for venison tonight.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
To follow up on the above comment. Down our road a wagon full of treated seed bags tipped into a creek which then ended up a half mile down stream where there was public swimming with lots of kids.
I noticed the red water called the police. Police took about two hours. They called the Ministry of environment. Nothing happened. The farmer later showed up and quickly removed as much as possible without being questioned.
On the seed bags it read. DO NOT WALK THE LAND FOR AT LEAST TWO WEEKS AFTER SEEDING.
When I requested a response from the authorities they told me that it was no concern for them and the environment.
I guess it must be safe to swim in it.
But it's worthwhile to send out 25 armed MNR officer to raid a raw milk farm.
I think it would be a constructive policy by better farming to only post comments which are signed and verified by name.
A lot of wasted senseless discussions going on here.
Michael Schmidt
"Even though there was literally no good science linking neonics to bee deaths in fields, they were banned anyway for use on flowering crops in Europe. Environmentalists pushing for the ban had asserted that removing neonics from the farmer’s toolbox would make no difference.The environmentalists were wrong. The loss of the canola crop this autumn is approaching 50 percent in Hampshire and not much less in other parts of the country. Since canola is one of the main flower crops, providing huge amounts of pollen and nectar for bees, this will hurt wild bee numbers as well as farmers’ livelihoods.
Farmers are instead reluctantly using pyrethroids. These older insecticides are less effective against pests (flea beetles are becoming resistant to them), more dangerous to other insects, especially threatening to aquatic invertebrates when they seep into streams and less safe to handle. So the result will be more insect deaths. In a panic, Defra has just announced that it will allow the use of two neonics, both are sprayed on the flowering crop, rather than used to dress seed! So they definitely can harm bees."
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/10/07/precautionary-principle...
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29368497
http://www.farmersguardian.com/67847.article
This is why Alberta Beekeepers refused to join the recent Ontario driven class-action lawsuit.Alberta beekeepers,who produce 40% of Canada's honey supply say banning neonics will lead farmers to use outdated lethorganophosphates and foliar applications of pesticides previously used, seed treatment technology significantly reduces honeybee exposure to pesticides.
"Rigorous testing" by PMRA ...give your head a shake...they don't test anything...the tests are submitted by the registrant (the chemical companies).
I saw an interview with Ontario Environment Commissioner, Gord Miller, the other night on Amanda Lang's Exchange on CBC television - anyone who saw that interview has to wonder:
(A) why it took so long for Miller to get to this point
(B) how the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) could ever deem Miller's findings to be "irresponsible"
When someone with as responsible a position as Miller's refers to;
(1) the scientific evidence against these products as being "overwhelming:
(2) neonicotinoids as being potentially more harmful than DDT
(3) bee deaths being "the canary in the coalmine"
nobody with any sense of public responsibility could ever believe there is a future for this product.
However, the culture of "deny, deny, deny" has become so-embedded in the DNA of the Grain Farmers of Ontario, especially when it comes to the economic harm ethanol, by the first principles of economics, inflicts on livestock farmers, and on public policy in general, that it's disappointing, albeit no real surprise, that they have adopted the same mindset when it comes to this product.
Miller clearly admitted that phasing out this product would be difficult because its use was "embedded" in the agricultural system - but by doing so, Miller was extending a glaringly-obvious invitation to the Grain Farmers of Ontario to come to the table with a plan to phase it out, rather than stubbornly and futilely continuing to defend it.
More to the point, Ontario's grain farmers clearly need a new organization prepared to recognize that grain farmers aren't the only farmers who matter, and aren't the only people who matter - by being ultra-partisan, ultra-parochial, and ultra-defensive, the present organization has failed utterly to do so, and has squandered my check-off fees in the process.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Seems what Mr.Miller says on some TV show and what is actually in his report are 2 different things.
I suggest his comments if and when he ever meets with the GFO will also be something less rigid.I doubt there will be any TV camera's in the room.
When the Environment Commissioner of Ontario, says something during a one-on-one interview, what he/she says is as much "undeniable fact" as anything written in a report - and it wasn't just one comment by Miller during this interview that rang the death knell for this pesticide - it was all of them.
It simply amazes me how the Grain Farmers of Ontario, and members of the anonymous rabble on this site, can still rigidly cling to the belief that Miller, as an ecologist by profession, is either "ill-informed" or that he somehow "mis-spoke" himself during the stress of an interview.
The idea that the Grain Farmers of Ontario will somehow be able to "brow-beat" Miller into recanting anything he said, or wrote, is just another example of the extent to which grain farmers have come to believe they're not just the only farrmers who matter, but also the only people who matter.
Almost every process and procedure has a "game-changer" moment when, like finding your wife in bed with another man, the issue goes from being debatable, to being all over - and Miller's report, and at least this interview, was the "game-changer" moment for this pesticide.
Come on, Grain Farmers of Ontario and members of the anonymous rabble on this site, really - you can continue to be all of the problem, or you can be part of the solution.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Well you are a representive for farmers to an organization . Look at how good that is working !
Comment will be published if resubmitted and signed.
The GFO needs to look at all seed treatments and use by their members
They believe that neonics = GMO. Therefore banning neonics = banning GMO.
Here's one comment from GMO Free Canada: "Thank you Mr Miller for researching investigating understanding and taking action to save our environment. Please research for us or have the appropriate people research GMO'S 's in our foods and protect the people of Canada ' s health by at least making it mandatory for this to be labeled in Canada on whatever food contains this. Thank you again."
As a Farmer I buy my seed and etc. for what I figure I need and thinks that the seed and etc. is safe when used as directed.
I have a pesticide certificate , but I for one is not a chemist .
So in the end I hope the homework is done for me and I do not have to go back to school to get a degree in chemistry to farm.
We seem to have a few know it all that should not be on the farm but in the lab making the world safer for everyone and thing.
"If it stays in the ground why are we so worked up about killing the bee's ?" This compound is water soluble what stays in the ground is absorbed by none target plants contaminating pollen and nectar. Being water soluble means it washes into rivers and streams, bees like all insects need water. The other problem is dust coming off the planter during planting and contaminating flowers in nearby none target fields. The dust generated by corn and soy planters has high concentrations of the insecticide. That’s how it works.
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