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Seed royalties and labelling discussed at CropSphere

Jan 17, 2019 | 4:00 PM

About 600 farmers and agriculture industry representatives took in the final session of CropSphere in Saskatoon Wednesday that focused on proposed seed royalties.

Seed companies say changes are needed in order to keep up with their global competitors. However, farmers are afraid of losing the ability to re-use their wheat seed without paying a royalty.

Agriculture Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have been travelling across Canada to discuss two proposals. One is an ‘end point royalty’ on delivered grain and the other is a ‘trailing royalty’ that would be collected on farm-saved seed.

Laura Reiter, the chair of Sask Wheat told delegates the board does not support either options. She said they are concerned about how the systems will affect farmers’ right to use farm saved seed and both proposals would create additional expenses for farmers.

However, Alanna Koch, a former Executive Director of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said farmers need improved varieties and she would vote yes for one of the proposals.

“I think there’s merit and value for farmers in both (proposals),” she told farmnewsNOW. “I think what it does is it sends the right signal to private breeding companies to invest here in Saskatchewan in Canada. I’d say yes to either [option] but definitely yes to one of them, as opposed to saying no to both; that would be the exact the opposite of where we need to go in Canada.”

The consultation process being undertaken by Agriculture Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will continue.

Follow what it says on the label

Meanwhile another issue to come out of the show this week was why farmers need to follow label directions in order to protect global markets.

Cereals Canada President Cam Dahl spoke to farmers to tell them the biggest change over the last 15 years is the ability to test seed and even the smallest presence of a pesticide could cause an international market disruption. 

Some markets have a zero tolerance policy.

“What we don’t want to see happen is off-label use of pesticides for example, giving those countries that are looking for a reason to block trade; we don’t want to give them that reason,” Dahl told farmnewsNOW. “The best way to avoid that is to scrupulously follow the label on pesticide products.”

Dahl said Italy used health and safety concerns to stop shipments of durum wheat. 

As a result he said Canada’s imports were cut to below 400,000 tonnes from over one million tonnes. 

 

alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca