by SUSAN MANN
Ontario’s government is moving full steam ahead to implement regulations under the Pesticides Act governing neonicotinoid-treated seeds early this summer despite a request by Grain Farmers of Ontario to extend the consultation deadline to June 30.
The deadline for comments on the proposed neonicotinoid seed-treatment regulation, posted on the Ontario Environmental Registry, is May 7 with the regulations slated to be in place by July 1. But in a letter to the government, Grain Farmers has asked for the deadline to receive comments to be moved to June 30 so farmers can get through their busy corn and soybean planting season in May and early June. The farm group also requested the government remove “any prejudgment on when they will implement their decision to show they are actually listening,” it says in a Grain Farmers press release.
“It’s unnecessary to force farmers to choose between planting Ontario’s crops or providing input for regulations that will dramatically impact their future,” Grain Farmers chair Mark Brock says in the release.
He adds the proposed regulations amount to a ban on treated seeds and they will impact nearly all of Grain Farmers’ 28,000 Ontario members, who grow both of the corn and soybean crops in rotation.
Ontario Environment and Climate Change Ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan says by email the ministry isn’t “looking at changing the closing date for the posting at this time.”
The government has already held extensive consultations to develop the discussion paper and the proposed regulations, she says, noting almost 65,000 comments were received on the discussion paper. She called that a record-breaking number and noted 97 per cent were in favour of the government’s plan to reduce farmers’ use of neonicotinoid-treated seeds.
“In addition to the public consultation on the draft regulation through the environmental registry posting, last fall we consulted on the discussion paper and this spring we held stakeholder sessions on the draft regulations,” she says.
Farmers will also be given time to prepare for the regulations’ requirements as the proposal includes a phase-in period with farmers being able to purchase and use neonicotinoid-treated seeds for the 2016 growing season “in an amount not greater than 50 per cent of the land that will be planted for corn or soybeans,” she says.
Jordan declined to say how many comments have been received so far through the environmental registry posting because the posting “is still open and it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment.”
Meanwhile, Grain Farmers says in its release, the proposal to have the regulations in place by July 1 “would be a record fast” decision for the environment and climate change ministry compared to similar decisions. There is a seven-week time period between the end of the comment period on neonicotinoid-treated seed regulations and the implementation of the actual regulations. That’s 10 times faster than the ministry typically takes to consider less contentious matters, the release says.
Few ministry decisions, even the non-controversial ones, were made in less than six months, according to the release.
After attending a technical briefing hosted by the environment and climate change ministry along with the provincial agriculture ministry earlier this spring, Grain Farmers said in an April 9 release it strongly opposes the regulations and called them “unworkable.” The group also opposes “any action to move them forward.” Grain Farmers has many concerns, including the regulations’ pest assessment methods, the selection of pests identified as valid, the industry’s capacity to manage the requirements along with liability and insurance implications. BF
Comments
The Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) seem to not be willing to understand that we are farming in one of the most densely-populated areas of North America and that 28,000 grain farmers are simply and vastly out-numbered by the approximately 13.6 million people living in Ontario.
It simply doesn't matter how valid any GFO concern might be, their position was "dead in the water" right from the start, and as a professionally-managed organization, the GFO provided a huge disservice to its members by not recognizing that reality before it squandered so much money and political capital on a lost cause.
If nothing else, this issue should, but probably won't, act as a "wake-up call" to farm groups who, like the GFO with neonicotinoids, might want to mount similar no-hope campaigns.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The GFO were told by myself and others 2 and a half years ago and again 2 years ago their approach might not work. I was politely told that my concerns were not valid and after taking Monsanto to court and holding out on issue of compensation for cattle producers after the GFO had made a deal for their members in 2006 that should step back so I did. This is a wake-up call that some of the staff and others at the GFO were told very strongly and quietly by many people both farmers and non farmers that this was a gamble ,that they should not take. Stephen Webster Blyth On.
It's time to mount a call for funds to hire a lobbist to remove the minister with the agenda
It is astounding that given everything the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) has done to attack government about the way it proposes to deal with neonicotinoids, nobody at GFO has stopped to think that government gave GFO members extremely-lucrative ethanol mandates over the strong and completely-legitimate protests of livestock farmers.
If for no other reason than ethanol mandates, probably the single-most defining thing about the GFO is its present inability, at the highest level, to:
(A) not "bite the hand that feeds them"
(B) recognize that complaining about neonicotinoids on their way to the bank with ethanol-enhanced grain cheques is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
This apparent inability to realize that government has given them plenty through ethanol mandates, and that, therefore, they should "take the good with the bad" makes GFO one of the most spectacularly-inept organizations most people in the farm community have, or will ever, see.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Steven this minister is attacking agriculture it has nothing to do with GFO .He has an agenda and it is to remove fungicides in cereals,glyphosate ,Phosphates and herbicides .All due to the fact he has an agenda not due to science on any of those subjects.He is attacking your farm business and mine by reducing our ability to make a profit
GFO saw nothing wrong with having ethanol mandates do a full-frontal "attack" on the profitability of animal agriculture - therefore, it's time for GFO to stop whining about neonicotinoids while on the way to the bank with ethanol-enhanced grain cheques.
If the minister has an "agenda", how is it so bad, and so-different from the "agenda" GFO pursued to beat livestock farmers over the head with ethanol mandates amd thereby reduce their "ability to make a profit"?
Sorry, but it really is all about GFO and their double-standards - if they hadn't been so quick to attack the ability of livestock and hog farmers to make a profit by the enactment of ethanol mandates, somebody might have some sympathy for grain farmers now.
It's like this - GFO soiled the bed by caring about nobody but themselves when it came to ethanol mandates, and it's time for them to shut up and pay the price for ignoring "that what goes around, comes around".
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Hogs are livestock are they not ? It seems you have a problem grouping them the same " livestock and hog farmers " . Oh that must be because hogs in Ontario are highly subsidized . And In Canada have in the past had a buy out program that no other livestock sector has ever gotten .
Your post simply highlights the need for Integrated N.A. Ag policies for all Ag commodities (except for S.M. ).
The ultimate double standard that exists in North American agriculture is the simple fact that we have different ag policies between the U.S. and Canada while at the same time we have an integrated (except for S.M.) N.A. production, consumption and export system.
Ethanol is enviromentally friendly so grain farmers were ahead of the pack and gov for that fact in helping the environment .
You must be speaking of the US farmers with regards to Ethanol mandates since YOU ( if I remember correctly ) had an Equity Trailer you pulled around the province . Since we are corn importers in Ontario and with the price of corn is set at the CBOT you must mean the US grain farmer is to blame .
Don't blame the U.S. corn farmer, they are simply responding to good U.S. government Ag policy which we don't have yet we have to compete with.
Stephan used to write long and often about "Equity with U.S. Grain Farmers" yet he seems to be forgetting about that approx. $100/ ac. U.S. advantage he often referred to.
No blame here . Just making a piont .
I would say the above poster just blew poor old Stephen and his battleship game right out of the galaxy !!
While anonymous posters wax eloquent about this, that or the other, the undeniable fact remains that GFO completely blew the entire neonicotinoid public relations exercise while the bee-keeping community conducted themselves perfectly.
For example, in today's London Free Press, a story outlined how GFO wants an extension to the time period for comments about the proposed amendments to neonicotinoid regulations, citing planting season time commitments.
Yet, Tibor Szabo, President of the Ontario Bee-keepers Association, responded to GFO's lamentations as follows:
(1) bee-keepers are busy too
(2) GFO walked out of the neonicotinoid consultation process, but yet still wants more time to comment on what came out of this process.
(3) GFO's entire strategy has been "deny, delay and distract"
The entire problem with the ongoing neonicotinoid issue can be pinned squarely on GFO's intransigence and abject unprofessionalism - any recommendation to GFO can be summed up in two words - "Grow-up!"
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Steve, I don't make a habit of agreeing with you, but this is a short and to the point post that I completely agree with.
GFO wouldn't acknowledge the possibility that they could be part of the problem off the start and then did everything they could not to deal with the problem along the way. The problem has been solved for them, and if they don't like the result they should have taken the issue seriously from the start.
John Gillespie
Ripley
The Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) has long-since been an anachronism - which means it is out of step with and out-of-touch with the times. Nowhere is this more evident than in its press releases which are reminiscent of the bombastic and confrontational rhetoric one would associate with hard-line labour unions of the 1950s and/or the National Farmers Union (NFU) in the hey-day of former NFU president, Wayne Easter.
Even the NFU seems to have finally, and thankfully, eschewed this odious practice, apparently leaving GFO as its sole remaining practitioner.
In the neonicotinoid saga, GFO's first mistake, and one of only many which would have been fatal just by itself, was to urge its members to boycott the pollinator health public participation process, claiming that the GFO message was "too important" - thereby ignoring that, in a democracy, nobody is "too important".
The second fatal mistake was to denounce the fact that neonicotinoid restrictions were being introduced without any sort of a vote, yet ignoring the fact that ethanol mandates were introduced without any sort of vote either.
The third fatal mistake was to announce that GFO wouldn't work with government to help implement any neonicotinoid restrictions and thereby clearly leaving people with the impression that GFO and its members believed themselves to be more important than any law which might adversely affect them.
The fourth fatal mistake was to run a full-page newspaper ad purporting to tell the "facts" when it did absolutely no such thing. For example the ad claimed that "we, the 28,000 farm families" in Ontario as if to imply that all farm families in Ontario agreed with the content of the ad, and also side-stepping the fact that the OFA, the CFFO and the NFU have a combined membership of about 40,000 and that none of these organizations was a signatory to the ad. In addition, GFO tried to infer that neonicotinoid issues were minor because the number of hives in Ontario increased by some 60% since 2003, yet completely-ignoring the reality that hive numbers are in no way connected to what goes on inside those hives.
The fifth, and probably not the last, fatal mistake was for GFO to issue a press release on May 6, 2015 claiming that neonicotinoid restrictions were "part of a thinly velied attack on agriculture". Unfortunately, GFO's evidence was one rather-innocuous quote by the Minister of the Environment as well as a few things he was alleged to have said but which were obviously also innocuous because GFO couldn't and/or wouldn't include them as a direct quote.
I mean, really, this is 2015 and there's absolutely no way any professionally-managed organization with 28,000 members should so-desperataly cling to devoid-of-integrity advocacy strategies which never did have any place in any sector of society, and particularly in agriculture where we have always valued integrity above all else.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Stephen you are right on the money on this one. The bee keepers with very little money did a very good job of working on the emotion of bees. The GFO should be very careful or they will lose all support for grain based fuels. Three people inside the Ontario Gov. this week ( on Thursday ) told me the GFO upset many people with very recent actions. Stephen Webster Blyth on.
Editor: Comment will be published i resubmitted and signed
The bee-keepers acted with integrity at all times; GFO not only didn't, they don't seem to even understand the concept.
Otherwise, I completely agree with Mr. Webster's observations and will go even further to point out that GFO is doing a fantastic job of squandering all of its political capital at once and is now at some considerable risk of being seen by government and integrity-driven farm organizations to be terminally-toxic to the point where the traditional " - 30 - " used to end press releases now could easily apply to the credibility of and/or usefulness of the GFO itself.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
You are both correct if you don't look at the science .
All things I have seen from GFO has never once said they were not a contribution after the fact that the bees firstly have other problems . So by way of the liberals you are correct . Might stand up in your personal kangaroo court but in a court of law would it with out reasonable doubt ? Are neonics the only problem ?
GFO has always taken the problem seriously . Bee keepers have not wanted to admit that they have problems . If bee keepers were hog and beef farmers , OSPCA would have taken their bees away from them !
(1) Because it is mandated, ethanol is, by definition, net-negative for jobs and economic activity in both Canada and the US
(2) Because of the inputs used to grow the corn needed for ethanol, the environmental benefit of ethanol is, at best, questionable in both Canada and the US
(3) because of the increased farm gate price of corn attributable to ethanol, it has been absolutely harmful to hog and cattle feeders in both Canada and the US.
The only way grain farmers were ever "ahead of the pack" is when it came to rushing to the trough to wallow in the higher incomes attributable to ethanol.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Why only hog and cattle feeders ? Are there not other livestock feed grain ?
All while we wallow in the high prices hog and beef farmers are paying for land .
Ethanol mandates do not hurt supply managed farmers due to the fact that they have government set cost of production. They are able to put it to the consumer.
In addition, the cash basis for crops would be significantly higher here in Ontario if the supply managed farms were abandoned, therefore creating a much bigger demand.
GFO should focus on that.
Raube Beuerman
Wasn't asking about SM but some of you sure seem to fixated on SM and nothing else .
Is there not other livestock in the country side that gets feed grain ?
What about all those small flockers , are they feeding table scraps ?
For the 1,000,000,000.00 time I do not agree with SM the way it is .
Jaysus some people need to get a life past their hate for SM !
I'm simply stating the truth.
My points are valid.
Raube Beuerman
Yer points are hearsay so nothing valid .
My point is made & correct . Fish in a barrel I tell ya with the anti SM crowd .
In your first post you asked the question "why only hog and cattle feeders?".
I answered your question with my following post, but here it is again. Dairy and poultry don't care about the price of feed since they have the ability to charge it back to consumers. Hog and beef farmers do not.
You then claimed that I was "fixated on SM", when it was you who brought it up when you asked the question ("why only hog and cattle feeders?" )in the first place.
Was your original question rhetorical?
Raube Beuerman
Raube Beuerman
In response to "@ HURT OBSESSED" http://betterfarming.com/comment/16149#comment-16149
Small Flockers are hurt by artificially high grain prices, and the consolidation of feed mills under Big Ag's billion dollar trans-national conglomerates.
There are strong indications (we're still awaiting the "smoking gun" proof) that vertical integration between the Big Ag. feed mills and the SM factories ensures maximum profits (ie. artificially high SM feed costs are paid out of the SM right hand pocket, and collected in the Big Ag. feed mill's left hand pocket, both pockets being sewn into the same pair of pants). Those who reside outside of that inbred "SM Family" get stuck paying the artificially jacked up price. The non-competitive, oligopoly-induced market price of SM feed is set so as to maximize the overall profit of the "SM-Feed Mill-Big Ag." system.
For example, SM poultry pay about $404.99/tonne for Quota Period A-130 (April 19 - June 13, 2005). I bought chicken feed yesterday for $18.00 per 25 kg bag, equivalent to $720.00 per tonne, feed at a 77.78% premium price that Small Flockers are forced to pay.
Fortunately, many or most Small Flockers believe in pastured poultry, unlike the cheek & jowl chicken factory barns with 200,000 birds forced to live in their own manure for their entire lives. Pastured chickens have their cages moved forward through the grass pasture, getting a fresh clean cage every day. This fresh grass allows the birds to get up to 40% of their nutrients from the pasture, 60% from the expensive commercial feed.
If we assume the pasture is "free", that gives us an equivalent feed cost of $432/tonne (ie. $720 x 0.6= $432.00/tonne-equivalent fed), which is an equivalent feed cost just 6.67% higher than the SM chicken factories.
Therefore, Small Flockers can compete even with unfair feed prices that punish Small Flockers.
However, Small Flockers are forced to own pasture, and have herbivores (cows, sheep, goats, etc.) to trim, fertilize, and invigorate the pasture grasses with their hooves; or do the equivalent with a tractor and chemical fertilizers. With 100% grass fed herbivores (ie. no grain feed whatsoever), the potential contamination of the chickens with E.coli 0157:H7 and similar pathogens picked up from the pasture grass is minimal, or non-existent.
In spite of the free pasture assumption above, pasture and herbivores are not without costs or efforts. More detailed ABC (Activity Based Costing) analysis may indicate that the herbivores are able to pick up all of the pasture costs and still be profitable, and the chicken ride "free" due to their ability to spread the herbivore manure and invigorate the pasture, avoiding expensive farm inputs by self-reliance.
Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
Glen
With all due respect , buying feed by the bag is going to cost more no matter where you buy it . Buying it 1 bag at time is also premium priced . It is called volume and cost . The feed just doesn't happen to jump into the bag all by itself . Small flockers should be growing their own feed for one . They should also be grinding their own feed .
Grass feed what ever livestock has to compete with the price of the industrial farms . Many can not afford to pay the premium price of specialty raised food .
Further pasture is not free and does not just grow . You need to have tons per acre produced which means you need to feed the pasture also .
If for no other reason pasture is not free because some one has paid a mortgage to own it and if nothing else there are property taxes paid every year at the very least .
In response to "Small Flock Feed" http://betterfarming.com/comment/16171#comment-16171
Thanks for your feedback. You raise some excellent points.
I understand that chicken feed is hygroscopic (attracts humidity out of the air), and quickly turns rancid. Shelf life is limited. Buying in bulk, a year's supply at one time will obviously be the cheapest price to buy, but can be the most expensive feed available due to the consequences for my animals.
I was previously caught by mycotoxin poisoning for one of my geese due to bad feed, requiring Intensive Care, nursing her back to health for 4 weeks.
I bought 6 tonnes of locally grown oats last Fall, and it has served me well. However, oats aren't the same as chicken feed. My egg production drops off drastically if the chickens get too many oats and not enough chicken feed.
I have looked at growing my own feed, vs. buying it from others. With the price of land, the capital $ for used farm machinery, and the expected yields in Northern Ontario, I cannot find a solution that produces grain at a cheaper price than what is available from others growing it for me.
I bought a used hammer mill (PTO tractor driven) to be able to eventually grind some of my own feed, but that is not yet installed. I am not sure of the net cost of that process when I consider the cost of diesel fuel, and wear & tear on the equipment.
I have been told that grass fed beef usually has a 30% price premium, as compared to CAFO feed lot beef. The flavour and the health advantage for 100% grass fed beef makes that premium price justified (ie. Omega-3 to Omega-6 fat ratio is far superior for 100% grass fed beef). The same goes for pastured chicken. I assume it's similar for other animals too.
Locally, most farmers put out ~30 head of cattle on 100 acres, allowing them to roam and eat whatever & whenever they please. I have heard that these pastures tend to last up to 10 years under these conditions, slowly deteriorating until it has to be plowed down & re-seeded.
Alternatively, I'm told intensive grazing techniques achieve up to 70% more animals per acre, and is so good for the pasture, they never need chemical fertilizer, never use a manure spreader (the cows naturally do all the work for the farmer), nor re-seeding, yet the soil and the grasses keep getting better each year.
I hope to have personal experience on these issues in the near future.
Again, if the profits derived from grazing herbivores are paying for the land and the pasture, and the poultry are helping the pastures in return for free use of the pasture, the bills get paid by the grazing herbivores, and Small Flock poultry can compete with the CAFO chicken factories.
This is a Win-Win situation between the chickens and herbivores, it seems to me.
Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
Glenn
Nothing is free . To say there is free use of pasture is not correct .
You sound like the people from Hydro One who go on to tell every one that lighting upgrades are free up to $1500.00 . Although in their mind it is free , they just don't seem to understand that every person paying a hydro bill IS paying the cost .
Nothing in life is free .
400 bucks a tonne in 2005 were did u get that?
Yes a tonne of soybeans didn't get to 300 dollars in 2005
He is only 10 years in the past and also from a time when corn , beans and wheat were low . Same time as the rallies were happening . Cherry picking or what ? !!!
Sorry for the typo, the price of $404.99 previously stated was for 2015, not 2005.
See http://www.ontariochicken.ca/getattachment/Farmer-Member-Resources/Live-...
I now have proof that some people carefully read my postings. Thanks for finding my error!
Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
Because I seem to have missed the announcement that the Province of Ontario plans to ban any number of fungicides and herbicides including glyphosate, I've either been asleep at the wheel or the above claims are the result of the poster whipping himself/herself into a lather.
Besides all that, I lived through the banning of Lasso herbicide in the 1980s - it wasn't a big deal, get over it!
I thought the issue was only about restricting the use of a product used only in about the last dozen years and, therefore, I simply don't understand all the hysterical "kitchen-sink" arguments coming from people like the above poster.
The problem with "slippery-slope" arguments like the one proffered by the above poster, is that while they are always popular and appeal to people's baser instincts, they are almost always little more than baseless and hysterical fearmongering coming from people who might lose something they didn't deserve to have in the first place.
Therefore, my advice to the above anonymous poster is - "Chill, bro!"
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
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