Why Some Alberta Farmers Worry About Glyphosate Alternatives

Canada is second only to the European Union in the world‘It is the second largest producer of durum wheat, which is used to make semolina for making pasta and couscous.But is Canadian wheat as flawless as we would like to believe it is? Contaminated By the controversial use of the pesticide glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient?

or‘This is what Italian agribusiness luminaries claim. are they right? Marie-Claude Lortie, a former columnist at La Presse and now editor-in-chief of his Le Droit, journalist girlfriend Marie-Claude Lortie, has investigated these issues, thanks to an award from the Michener Foundation.

This is the second in a series of three articles. Translated from French by Paul Wells.

CARMANGAI, Alberta—In the prairies, roadside signs sometimes display fetal pictures and anti-abortion messages, and sometimes slogans call for Alberta to separate from Canada.

But most of the time, the messages on the billboards are about agriculture.

They praise herbicides that attack invasive plants, tout strains of seeds treated against insect infestations, and Erebus Xtreme and Edge that sound like Harry Potter characters and monster truck brands. It advertises products with names such as

“Online Pesticide Training Program. Register Now,” reads a roadside sign.

I read the cover of Grainews lying at the table of Kevin Orch, a grain and legume farmer whom I met in Carmangay, a rural village about 100 miles south of Calgary. The cover of the magazine was dedicated to Kochia. Kochia is an invasive plant that invades farmers’ fields and is becoming more resistant to herbicides. It’s been a big headache for Alberta farmers lately.

Fighting weeds is a daily concern in the heart of the Prairie, where wheat and many other Canadian grains are grown for sale around the world.

That’s where I went to meet a controversial Canadian grower in Italy. However, Italians rely on hundreds of thousands of tons of this grain each year to make spaghetti and other pasta staples.

Kevin Auch, who alternates durum wheat with bread wheat, flax, peas and other crops on his 5,000-acre farm, told me he actually uses glyphosate. is not the method complained about – spraying pesticides just before harvest. This technology is attractive to some growers because of its versatility.

Auch said he only uses glyphosate in the spring to prep the fields and remove weeds before sowing.

“I haven’t used glyphosate pre-harvest in years,” he said. No, but it is allowed, to keep weeds out of the crop.”

It is legally permissible to spray while the grain is still standing. All that is required is a crop humidity level of less than 30%. At that point glyphosate can kill the weeds that infest the wheat, but the wheat itself is nearing the end of its life cycle and can no longer absorb the product. is minimized.

But in both Italy and Canada, critics have accused farmers of artificially using glyphosate to dry out their grains instead of waiting for them to reach the 30% moisture threshold. Plants can absorb the product, increasing the risk of it entering the crop.

“If they do, they are not respecting the law,” Auch said.

The farmer does not have organic certification, but like many of his colleagues, he has opted for a crop rotation that allows for the sustainable management of weeds and other nasty problems. His soil biochemistry varies from season to season due to the interaction of different crops with the soil and the atmosphere. Practices to reduce inputs such as herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides are becoming increasingly common in Alberta.

Reducing the use of these substances is a matter of health and environmental protection, but also of cost control.Auch laments the conflict between Canadian producers and Italy. “Canada has a bad reputation now,” he said. “Sad. But my durum is not sprayed with glyphosate.”

In this part of Southern Alberta, if you want to go to a farm, you are not sent an address, but a point on the map with latitude and longitude. After that, all you need is trust, enough gas, and a western movie soundtrack. That’s how I got to Rod Lanier’s farm near Lethbridge. Lanier is a durum wheat farmer, just like his father was before him. “If it was that dangerous, my 92-year-old father wouldn’t be there on horseback in my fields.

“My worms don’t seem to be worried either,” he said. He stopped cultivating in favor of crop rotation, so now his soil is richer.

What people don’t understand is that glyphosate helps farmers avoid having to till their fields to pull out weeds.Tilling is terrible for soil quality, he said. . Earthworms, which are very useful for the soil, will die if their habitat is disturbed, thus damaging the organic structure of the soil. Tillage destroys what holds the soil together causing erosion.

Sandstorms on the Prairie were commonplace when Lanier was a child. Cultivation is very rare, he said.

As for glyphosate, “they’ll probably take it away from us,” he said.

Jason Saunders, a farmer and one of the vice-chairmen of the Alberta Wheat Commission, says it’s impossible to say who in Canada is spraying glyphosate pre-harvest. There is no register to sign, no declaration to make. He doesn’t use it, as do his three other farmers he works with. He likes crop rotation. But he uses glyphosate before sowing.

Is he afraid of products?

His greatest concern is weeds that are resistant to herbicides and stubbornly cling to his fields.

And what about his health?

Glyphosate, which has been approved in Canada since 1976, has been classified as a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer since 2015. The company that created the product, Monsanto, and its current owner, German multinational Bayer, have been attacked from all sides in courts in many jurisdictions, including Canada. In Canada, previous users said glyphosate made them sick, and regulators didn’t do their job properly. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ordered Health Canada to reassess its position on glyphosate and reconsider concerns from critics and the public.

In Quebec, as in France, the government has added Parkinson’s disease to the list of workplace illnesses. The change is partly due to pressure from sick farmers who claim the condition is the result of pesticide use.

Jason Sanders does not believe there is any danger in using glyphosate properly.

“No, I’m not worried,” he said. “I’m more worried about the smog in the city.”

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