Neonic control proposal provokes strong reactions in Ontario's farm community

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

Love it or hate it, one thing is for sure.

No one embroiled in the neonicotinoid pesticide debate appears to be content with an Ontario government discussion paper that proposes cutting the number of acres using neonicotinoid-treated corn and soybean seeds by 80 per cent by 2017.

Barry Senft, CEO of Grain Farmers of Ontario, describes the proposal as holding the potential to create a “bureaucratic nightmare.”

Pierre Petelle, vice president, chemistry, for CropLife Canada, questions how Ontario farmers will be able to compete with their global counterparts.

The Ontario Beekeepers’ Association newly elected president Tibor Szabo says the proposal “a really good start,” but doesn't go far enough. If the province’s pollinators are to be safeguarded from the threat of certain pesticides, more measures are needed.

The 17-page proposal, released today for a 60-day comment period by the ministries of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and Environment and Climate Change, describes many different steps farmers will be expected to take starting next summer, including:

• Complete focused integrated pest management training for soybean and corn growing.
• Document integrated pest management activities used to reduce pest threats.
• Complete a credible risk assessment demonstrating the need to use neonicotinoid treated corn and soybean seed because a particular pest is above specific thresholds.
• Obtain verification of the assessment by a third party to confirm the method used to determine the risk of a pest was properly followed.

There will also be new requirements for seed sellers, including changes in how products are marketed. And there will be new rules for the use of neonicotinoid-treated seeds.

The proposed regulations will be implemented in July 2015 for the 2016 growing season.

As well, during the next 12 months, the government will be talking to the public, subject matter experts and stakeholders to develop a pollinator health action plan. The 80 per cent reduction target by 2017 is one of the plan’s main goals, as is reducing the overwinter honeybee mortality rate to 15 per cent by 2020. (This past winter, the mortality rate reached 58 per cent, the highest level ever recorded. For the previous 12 years Ontario’s overwinter mortality rate for the bees averaged 34 per cent).

Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Minister Jeff Leal says in an emailed statement sent via his senior press and communications adviser that he looks “forward to continue working collaboratively with our partners as we more towards a balanced, practical approach that improves the health of Ontario’s pollinators, protects the environment and supports the growth of the agri-food sector.”

Of the almost seven million acres of field crops planted annually in Ontario, corn and soybeans are the two largest with corn at 2.4 million acres and soybeans at 2.5 million acres, the government’s document says.

About 99 per cent of the corn seed and 60 per cent of the soybean seed sold in Ontario is treated with neonicotinoids. “These two crops present the greatest potential for reductions in the use of neonicotinoid-treated seeds,” the document says.

The government plans to introduce a regulatory system to restrict the sale and use of neonicotinoid seed treatments for corn and soybeans under Ontario’s Pesticides Act. Neonicotinoid insecticides are currently regulated under the Act but seeds treated with the pesticide are not, the document says.

This change would “make it clear that these treated seeds are regulated under the Pesticides Act,” the document says. The proposal calls for creating a new class of pesticides under the Ontario Act to include seeds treated with pesticides.  

Spokesmen for farm and industry groups say they don’t know how much the new proposals will cost farmers in added time and money to complete. “Whatever it is it will be more than what’s required today,” says Senft.

Petelle says a recent Conference Board of Canada study documented more than $600 million in costs to farmers “if they were to lose these technologies outright and 80 per cent is pretty close to losing them outright.”

The proposal adds a tremendous amount of red tape and bureaucracy. “There’s a cost to government; there’s a cost to farmers and to the vendors to understand how this is all going to work. There’s so much complexity here to the already challenging job of being a farmer,” Petelle says.

There could also be negative environmental consequences if the government adopts this proposal, Petelle notes, adding farmers may give up conservation tillage and the use of cover crops that they were able to use because of neonicotinoid-treated seeds.  “All of that could be reversed by this decision.”

Petelle says they don’t know how much the proposal will cut pesticide manufacturers’ incomes but “the reality is it puts Ontario at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.”

Senft says there are several unanswered questions in the government’s proposal. For example, about the need for the third party inspection, he asks “Who’s going to carry the liability if the third party inspector says a farmer doesn’t need seed treatment and it turns out the producer loses half of his crop because of that third party assessment?”

He also questions why farmers have to do these additional steps. “Our farmers are very strong stewards of the land as it is today and what is all this going to do other than cause a bureaucratic nightmare?”

Senft wonders how the government came up with the 80 per cent reduction in acreage planted with neonicotinoid-treated seeds. “There’s no basis for the 80 per cent whatsoever.”

Grain Farmers plans to submit comments on the proposal, but for the government to ask the group to help it implement the 80 per cent reduction is “not going to happen from a GFO perspective,” Senft notes. “They never asked us to help them put a number into place. The 80 per cent is something they picked.”

Ontario Beekeepers’ Szabo, on the other hand, offers a qualified support for the proposal, which, he says, “gives beekeeping a possible future in Ontario.”

But what his association wants to see, he says, is a “regulation on any systemic, persistent and mobile insecticide. Neonics, which would be the chlorinated derivatives of nicotine, are definitely on the agenda at the moment.” But pesticide manufacturers are working to replace neonicotinoids “with other types of systemic, insect-toxins. We don’t want to have to go through this again.”

Szabo says it will take “a couple of years, hopefully not longer, for the persistent feature of these poisons to dissipate.”

Don McCabe, newly elected president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says the proposal was to be on the general farm organization’s agenda on the board meeting following its annual convention that wrapped today.

The OFA was conspicuously absent in the formation of Farm Action Now, a coalition of farm groups launched earlier this month that is calling for the province to establish a commissioner to advise the government on farm-related regulation and to help grow the agricultural sector. The coalition also wants to see a science-based approach to regulation to issues like the use of neonicotinoids.

McCabe says preparations for the OFA’s annual meeting and “some changes in rules of governance that had to be dealt with," had precluded more involvement initially with the coalition. However, the general farm organization did have representation at the initial meeting between the commodity groups, he says, and "I guarantee you the OFA will be actively engaged in the consultations going forward with the government.”

Fast following on the heels of the provincial proposal today was an update from Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency on its reevaluation of neonicotinoids.

The report noted that while negative effects in pollinators had been documented when they were exposed long term to sub-lethal levels of neonicotinoids, the studies – both in the lab and in the field used doses higher “than may normally be encountered in the environment.”

In its conclusion, the report notes “the available science indicates pollinator effects can result from sub-lethal exposure to neonicotinoids, but no conclusions can be drawn that actual environmental exposures from some uses are at levels that may result in effects.” More work is needed in this area, it says, “and all available information will be considered in the neonicotinoid re-evaluation.” BF

– with files from DON STONEMAN