“I would expect a full dollar per litre change on glyphosate,” said Breen Neeser, Canadian manager for Farmers Business Network (FBN). “That could happen any day now.”

FBN and many other crop input retailers source their products from China, which means looming supply shortages are also a concern.

“When you have a world event like this, that long supply chain becomes extremely difficult to manage,” he said. “I think it’s going to have a real impact on who has what to sell this spring.”

WHY IT MATTERS: Fertilizer and diesel prices are already sky high, so farmers don’t need another blow.

Bill Prybylski, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, said he is not surprised that agriculture chemical costs are rising, given what has already happened with fertilizer and diesel.

“Margins were thin already, and this is just going to exacerbate that situation,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of red ink on a lot of farmers’ books come this fall.”

He described the situation as “death by a thousand cuts.”

Shipping delays compound the problem

Neeser said there has also been a tightening in ocean vessel availability, leading to delays for product arriving at the Port of Vancouver. FBN was recently informed about its first major delay with a glufosinate shipment.

He said people need to “wake up” to the fact that product they thought would land in April or May could be delayed by a month or two.

“Some of it is going to miss the season,” said Neeser.

Why prices are climbing

There are multiple reasons crop protection products are getting more expensive. Yellow phosphate, a key ingredient in manufacturing glyphosate and glufosinate, is suddenly in short supply and has become very pricey. Natural gas, another key input, is also rising.

Soaring diesel prices are driving up transportation costs at every stage — moving raw ingredients to manufacturing plants in China, shipping finished product to Chinese ports, crossing the ocean and then hauling it to distribution points across Western Canada.

Some retailers may have stockpiles of cheaper, older product and may be able to shield farmers from the price shock briefly. However, most suppliers bring in product as close to when it is needed as possible to minimize carrying costs, meaning the impact will be felt immediately.

Some farms on the financial edge

Neeser said some farmers in Western Canada have had tremendous financial success over the past decade with a combination of good grain prices, moisture levels and yields. But there are pockets where farmers have not been so fortunate, and he worries about their ability to withstand today’s harsh environment.

“I don’t mean to be doom and gloom on it, but the economic impact of this war is going to have related impacts on farm size and on who is farming and who isn’t and who can survive and who can’t,” he said.

Prybylski said it is “absolutely” correct that some farmers could be exiting the business this year.

“There are some producers that have been kind of just hanging on. This may be the death knell for them,” he said.

There has been improvement in grain prices lately, but some farmers won’t be able to participate in that rally because they had a small crop and had to liquidate it to pay last year’s bills. Now they are facing across-the-board hikes in input costs for the 2026 crop.

“This is just going to be an extra pressure on their margins that may very well be the deciding factor for some guys to pull the pin on their operations,” said Prybylski.

Diquat and glyphosate supply at risk

Neeser is particularly concerned about Diquat, a popular herbicide and desiccant.

“One of the plants that makes dibromide, which is the active ingredient in Diquat, has come under attack and as far as we know is not producing well,” he said.

There are not many other facilities in the world that make that active ingredient, so supply concerns for Diquat are significant.

Prybylski said products such as Diquat and glufosinate are used later in the growing season, so he is hopeful the supply chain issues will be resolved by then. However, he is very concerned about glyphosate costs and supply because that is a major tool farmers use in the spring.

He noted that some producers already have the majority of their farm chemicals on hand or in position in a warehouse, but others prefer to hold off on purchases until needed.

“Those guys may be rethinking their decisions this spring,” he said.

Neeser said growers might be forced to consider alternatives to traditional crop protection products, such as plant growth benefactors and nutritional supplements. Some farmers may even decide to forego certain products altogether because they can’t make the numbers work.

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Why it matters: Sencor’s portfolio products add more crop protection solutions for Canadian growers.

Sencor products have been used for decades on tough broadleaf and grassy weeds across a wide range of crops, including pulses, potatoes and soybeans. With the new integration of Sencor products, Sipcam Agro will expand proven herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and biostimulants.

Sencor products are a Group 5 mode of action, making them an important tool to help growers manage weed resistance.

Sipcam will soon begin managing all sales, marketing and distribution activities for Sencor 75 DF and Sencor 480 F in Canada.

Sipcam is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. Since 2024, Sipcam Agro in Canada has focused on supplying crop protection products to Canadian farmers.

akienlen@fbcpublishing.com

The post Sencor crop protection products now available from SipCam Agro Canada appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Avireo is a pre-seed/pre-emergent herbicide combining Group 27 and Group 14 active ingredients. FMC promotes it as the first product of its kind in Western Canada.

Avireo targets such broadleaf weeds like Group 2, 4 and 9 herbicide-resistant kochia, Group 2 and 4 herbicide-resistant cleavers, volunteer canola and others.

Barricade III is a post-emergent herbicide with a higher-than-normal rate of fluroxypyr for enhanced control of kochia and other troublesome broadleaf weeds.

Also claiming kochia control is PrecisionPac CF-18-878 Pro. FMC says the burnoff blend provides extended control of more than 50 broadleaf weed species, among them kochia, narrow-leaved hawk’s-beard, Russian thistle and volunteer canola. It features four modes of action when mixed with glyphosate.

Express FT is also marketed for kochia control and others like cleavers and dandelions.

The three other crop protection products on the company’s 2026 slate include:

• Avoda Pro seed treatment for protection of wheat, barley, oats and rye against seed and soil-borne diseases. Its three active ingredients are tebuconazole, prothioconazoleb and metalaxyl.
• Focus NXT herbicide — a preseed herbicide formulated with spring wheat growers in the black soil zone in mind.
• Optimize FXC DS — a soybean innoculant meant to help support early nodulation and crop establishment.

The post FMC Canada unveils 2026 crop protection roster appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Aaron Hager, a University of Illinois weed scientist, reported last month that Illinois had several locations where waterhemp had developed resistance to glufosinate, a commonly used herbicide in North America.

Other states in the Midwest have the same problem.

“Four states in the U.S. (including Illinois) are all going to come out (soon) with glufosinate-resistant waterhemp,” said Joe Ikley, a weed scientist at North Dakota State University.

Ikley made the comment Jan. 7 at St. Jean Farm Days, a farm show in Manitoba’s Red River Valley.

The news from the U.S. Midwest is concerning because farmers are running out of options to control waterhemp, a member of the pigweed family. It has already developed resistance to seven different modes of action.

For farmers on the northern Great Plains, it’s a matter of time before waterhemp with resistance to glufosinate is confirmed, Ikley said.

“If it can evolve resistant to a herbicide in Illinois, there’s no reason it can’t do it in North Dakota or the Canadian Prairies.”

Kochia next?

Waterhemp was first discovered in Manitoba in 2017, and it’s now present in a wide geography within the province.

It hasn’t been confirmed in Saskatchewan, but weed experts are asking farmers and agronomists to maintain a close watch for the troublesome weed.

While waterhemp is an extremely difficult weed, a bigger risk to western Canadian farmers would be glufosinate-resistant kochia.

In North Dakota, farmers apply glufosinate to 10-million acres of land every year, Ikley said.

So, kochia plants are receiving repeated doses of glufosinate, and resistance is on the horizon.

More North Dakota farmers are reporting escapes, where the herbicide fails to kill a kochia plant. If glufosinate is applied to 100 kochia plants in field and 95 die, the remaining five plants are “escapes.”

“We see escapes almost every year. Can we prove those ones to be resistant, yet? It’s just a matter of time … until we get a population that is indeed resistant.”

Joe Ikley, weed scientist
North Dakota State University

It’s impossible to predict when glufosinate-resistant kochia will arrive in North Dakota or the Prairies.

But Ikley is particularly worried about canola growers, who rely on glufosinate to keep weeds in check.

InVigor hybrids dominate the canola acres in Western Canada, which are genetically modified to have tolerance to glufosinate.

“The issue, when I look at kochia and canola right now, is that the options are glyphosate or glufosinate,” Ikley said.

“And we (already) have widespread glyphosate resistance (in kochia).”

At St. Jean Farm Days, an agronomist delivered a blunt assessment of the risk.

If glufosinate-resistant kochia appears on the Prairies, farmers are “hooped.”

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A group of mostly Cuban burglars, led by former intelligence agents Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were found ransacking filing cabinets and planting listening devices.

By the time the whole tawdry tale came out, a new naming convention for political scandals was firmly ensconced in the public imagination, senior members of president Richard Nixon’s administration were jailed and Nixon was forced to resign in August 1974.

Over time it’s become apparent that Nixon knew nothing of the mission until after the fact. Yet he and his administration were held accountable because once they did know, they attempted to cover it up. They destroyed evidence, obstructed investigators and bribed the arrested burglars.

In the end, Nixon was forced from office when the contents of a tape recorded conversation between he and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, were made public. They can be heard scheming to influence the investigation, and Nixon can be heard ordering the FBI to end its investigation.

Fifty years ago that sort of conduct by a sitting president was taken seriously by the American public, and American politicians. Eleven Republicans on the judiciary committee, who had previously voted against impeachment, announced they would change their vote. Rather than delay the inevitable, Nixon resigned.

An idiom that exists to this day emerged from this scandal: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.” Essentially, something can be bad, but taking the wrong action can always make it worse.

I couldn’t help but think of this recently, when word of the retraction of a landmark study on the safety of glyphosate reached my desk. The study, published 25 years ago in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, concluded glyphosate was safe for humans.

The study has been described as “foundational” to many public regulatory reviews, including Health Canada’s. Not surprisingly, there are now calls worldwide for further review, including here in Canada.

In retracting the study, the journal noted that documents released as part of litigation suggest employees of Monsanto were the ghostwriters of the study and that the company paid the study’s authors of record.

The retraction notice further stated that the conclusions on whether glyphosate causes cancer in the study were based entirely on unpublished studies from the chemical firm.

This scandal — Glyphos-gate, if you will — is just another nail in what could be the coffin of a keystone weed control agent that underpins the minimum tillage production systems used so widely on the Canadian Prairies.

Last March, Bayer chief executive officer Bill Anderson warned that the firm was likely to stop producing Roundup if costly lawsuits continued.

He told the Wall Street Journal payouts had already cost the company US$10 billion, and were causing annual losses of $2 to $3 billion on total Roundup sales of $2.8 billion last year.

“We’re pretty much reaching the end of the road,” Anderson told reporter Patrick Thomas in an interview.

“We’re talking months, not years.”

Losing the glyphosate molecule would be difficult to imagine, given its near-total adoption in Prairie production systems. But the greater issue for the agriculture sector is going to be how this will undermine public trust.

Agriculture has long counselled critics to “stick with the science” because decisions can’t be made on feelings.

However, when a scientific study has been deemed by reviewers to be unduly influenced or ghostwritten by those seeking to benefit from regulatory approval, it’s going to be a tough sell to the public.

If agriculture does have to face up to a post-glyphosate world, Monsanto will have a lot to answer for.

Unlike Nixon, who had to face his nation for the coverup, Monsanto has disappeared by way of corporate merger, leaving farmers nobody to kick around for the consequences.

The post Roundup retraction makes public trust ripples appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Health Canada, in an email, said PMRA employees are coping with a large number of safety evaluations, thus delaying its decision on glufosinate.

“The target timeframes for post-market reviews typically vary between two to four years … depending on the complexity of the re-evaluation, availability of data, stakeholder engagement and other factors,” Health Canada said.

“However, like many other regulators (in other countries), PMRA is facing a backlog of post-market reviews.”

Agency experts began looking at the health and environmental safety of glufosinate-ammonium in 2018. It expects to complete the evaluation in 2027.

Liberty, which has glufosinate-ammonium as its active ingredient, is a popular herbicide on Canadian farms. It’s used to control weeds on fields seeded with BASF InVigor canola, hybrids that have tolerance to glufosinate. It’s also sprayed on weeds in other crops in Canada, the United States, South America and dozens of other countries.

The herbicide is not used in Europe, where the registration of glufosinate expired in 2018 and was not renewed. The European Union classified the herbicide as presumed toxic for human reproductivity.

BASF rejects that assessment, with its website saying it was based on lab studies where rats were exposed to “doses impossible under realistic and responsible conditions of use.”

“Glufosinate-ammonium has been used safely for 30 years… and to-date, there are no known cases of harm to humans when applied according to labelled instructions.”

The PMRA launched its special review of glufosinate after France “prohibited all uses due to health reasons,” Health Canada said.

Meanwhile, the PMRA started a re-evaluation of glufosinate in 2019. Re-evaluations of pesticides happen every 15 years, which is required under the Pest Control Products Act.

The PMRA merged those efforts into one evaluation.

“There is substantial amount of information to analyze as part of these reviews,” Health Canada said.

“Products containing glufosinate ammonium can continue to be used according to the current label directions during these evaluations.”

However, the PMRA will not permit new uses of glufosinate, until the evaluation is complete.

As part of a plan to speed up reviews and decisions, the PMRA wants to focus its attention on pesticides that require more oversight.

“PMRA will continue to explore opportunities to streamline its processes and optimize resource allocation,” Health Canada said. “Thereby supporting industry competitiveness and reinforcing the PMRA’s ability to deliver on its core mandate over the long term.”

The post Ten years to study a pesticide? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The products are more effective, a dozen farmers across the Thessaly plain said. They are also potentially more harmful: laboratory tests shared with Reuters show the bottles contain pesticides banned in the European Union for several years because of suspected risks to humans or the environment.

The situation in Greece, explained by farmers, elected officials, law enforcement officers and pesticide industry experts, is echoed across the EU, where authorities say the use of banned and counterfeit pesticides is higher than ever.

This comes as the bloc is seeking to reduce even the use of permitted crop aids as part of its green transition.

At least 14 per cent of pesticides used on EU fields today are illegal, up from around 10 per cent in 2015, EU data shows. In some areas of Greece, that number hits 25 per cent, said Greece’s Crop Protection Association ESYF, which represents pesticide companies in the country.

A record 2,040 tonnes of illegal pesticides were seized by police in Europe in 2022, the latest available data by Europol from an EU-wide operation shows, four times higher than in 2019.

The problem is likely even larger because so much smuggling goes undetected, said authorities in Greece and in several of Europe’s main agricultural producers: France, Germany and Spain.

Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras told Reuters Greece was working to protect public health, support farmers, and promote safe, legal agricultural production.

“The fight against illegality is a priority for us,” he said.

The EU Commission did not respond to Reuters’ questions.

Farmers’ livelihoods threatened

Greek farmers are vulnerable to the illegal pesticide trade because of the lingering impacts of the 2010-18 financial crisis and climate change, which has parched their land and brought pest outbreaks.

Pesticides can amount to up to 50 per cent of annual costs, some farmers said. A litre of a popular Greek insecticide costs up to 380 euros (C$607.62). A counterfeit can be found on the black market for 200-230 euros, they added.

The high prices threaten livelihoods in Thessaly, a key breadbasket in central Greece, which produces apples, almonds, grains and cotton. Orchards in the region have been abandoned as farmers seek work elsewhere.

“To survive, a farmer must become a criminal?” said Giorgos Zeikos, a fourth-generation apple farmer who heads a cooperative in the village of Agia.

“It’s one thing to break the law to profit; it’s another to do it just to survive.”

Zeikos said he has refused offers to use illegal pesticides. But farmers in six villages across the hot valley said they, or their relatives or neighbors, had tried them.

Another temptation is the perceived effectiveness of the illegal pesticides.

On a break from the fields, farmers in the cotton-producing village of Metamorfosi recounted how older, now-banned pesticides were so potent that birds would not fly over their fields after they sprayed. Now, they said, they apply twice the recommended dose of the legal product.

George Pontikas, president of ESYF, the crop protection association, dismissed farmers’ claims that pesticides were expensive and inefficient. He said authorities were not doing enough to punish lawbreakers.

“Someone who poisons our food supply to make a profit should be treated as a felon,” said Pontikas, who is also chief executive of the Greek branch of Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta.

Illicit chemical trade

The products are smuggled into Greece overland from Bulgaria in spare tires or ferried on rafts traffickers use to bring migrants into Europe from Turkey, farmers and officials said.

In one village, an almond farmer said he once drove to Bulgaria and bought five boxes of counterfeit products for himself and his neighbours. In another, a farmer said locals act as intermediaries for a man known as “the Bulgarian”. When he is expected, they take orders from others in the village.

Farmers pay in cash, spray at night and burn the empty containers to erase all evidence, they said.

“If you want it, you’ll find it,” said Thanasis Kostis, a farmer in Metamorfosi. Kostis said he has not used illegal products.

Farmers who told Reuters they had used the illegal pesticides asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from authorities.

Bulgaria’s Food Safety Agency said it has stepped up inspections since October to combat the trade and use of unauthorized products.

Turkey’s Trade Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The trade is increasingly structured, resembling organized economic crime, a senior Greek police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Roles are divided into import, storage and distribution. Meanwhile, police act largely on tip-offs, three police and industry officials told Reuters.

Dimitris Stavridis, head of Thessaly’s General Directorate of Regional Agricultural Economy, acknowledged that more checks could be carried out in farmers’ markets but said that some regions struggled with understaffing.

Health risks

Seized products go to the Benaki Phytopathological Institute in Athens for analysis. Many arrive with Bulgarian, Turkish, or handwritten labels. Some counterfeits look like EU-approved products but may contain harmful substitutes, including unknown solvents. Under Greek law, only pesticides with Greek labels are legal.

Greek police and Europol say many of these substances originate in China.

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email it has always asked companies to abide by the laws in the countries in which they operate and that Beijing is willing to strengthen cooperation with the EU on customs enforcement.

The EU bans have been partly due to what regulators identified as health risks, including links to liver, kidney and lung damage, or as possible carcinogens. However, some of these chemicals are used legally in other countries, including the United States.

Over a dozen banned pesticides – some since 2009 – were detected in Greece alone in 2024, tests seen by Reuters show.

“This is serious,” said Thessaly Governor Dimitris Kouretas, a toxicology professor, referring to research on the possible health impact.

In the past year, 10 banned pesticides were detected in Greek produce including olives, cherries, tomatoes, grapes and oranges, Agriculture Ministry data shows.

While the World Health Organization says consumer risk from low pesticide levels is minimal, farmers using illegal chemicals may face greater danger.

In the early 2000s, respiratory physicians at Larissa University Hospital in Thessaly observed that many patients who smoked and were exposed to pesticides were developing a rare form of lung scarring. In 2006, their published findings alongside similar research in France, helped to formally recognize a disease now known as Combined Pulmonary Fibrosis and Emphysema (CPFE).

“Nearly all such patients exposed to both smoking and pesticides developed this distinct entity,” said doctor Ilias Dimeas.

Elsewhere in Greece’s farming regions, doctors say they have seen a rise in respiratory diseases in recent years potentially linked to pesticide exposure and are beginning to take note of their patients’ occupational history.

Farmers greet the risks with a shrug.

“All pesticides have consequences,” said Kostis, the farmer in Metamorfosi. “I had a mask, but this year I haven’t worn it at all.”

— Additional reporting by Alexandros Avramidis in Thessaly; Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt; Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris, Emma Pinedo in Madrid, Georgi Slavov in Sofia, Kate Abnett in Brussels, Joe Cash in Beijing and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara.

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While imports of other companies’ off-patent brands of glyphosate may buffer the immediate shock, the long-term implications could reshape weed management across the Prairies.

Hugh Beckie, a former Agriculture Canada weed scientist, explored this very scenario in 2019. At the time, he was based at the University of Western Australia, so his modelling focused on Australian farming systems. But while the crops may differ, both Australia and Canada depend heavily on glyphosate-based weed control, making many of his findings relevant here.

Beckie’s work laid out not just the impacts of losing glyphosate, but the sweeping system-wide changes farmers would need to adopt in its absence.

To understand what that shift might look like on the ground, Glacier FarmMedia spoke with Kim Brown, provincial weed extension specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, about the tools, trade-offs and decisions farmers may face if glyphosate were to disappear from the weed control toolbox.

Brown said Canadian farmers have already been working to reduce their reliance on glyphosate due to the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds.

“We’ve already been going down that road where glyphosate for certain weeds just has not been working,” said Brown.

“We’ve had to find alternative methods for weed control.”

That said, a full loss of glyphosate would escalate the challenge considerably, especially given that weed pressure is a constant in Prairie fields.

“There are weed seeds in the soil. The weed seed bank is vast,” she said.

“Every single year there will be weeds.”

That tracks with what Troy LaForge, who farms in the brown soil zone near Cadillac, Sask., about 65 km south of Swift Current, predicted when we asked him to consider what his fields would look like if glyphosate were to someday disappear from the market.

“What we would probably see is a progression in winter annual and perennial weeds, and from that perspective, we may have to change up to some different oilseeds where we can use actives like clopyralid (the Group 4 active in products such as Lontrel and Curtail) and some of the graminicides (Groups 1 and 2) that are more effective on perennial grasses like quackgrass and foxtail barley,” he said.

“We’d have to change to some different crops, and I honestly don’t know what those would be at this moment, but we may have to change because we just don’t have means of keeping weeds under control otherwise.”

Southwestern Saskatchewan is not generous with the rainfall and not typically canola country, but if glyphosate were to go away, “it might mean that we’ve got to start growing canola more continuously to use a product like glufosinate (the Group 10 active in Liberty) for example.”

Brown concurs there are other herbicide options, even in glyphosate-tolerant systems, thanks to stacked traits — but those alternatives likely won’t cover the same broad weed spectrum that glyphosate does.

“We will have alternatives,” she said.

“But it’s going to get a lot more complicated, and it’s definitely going to get more expensive.”

Farmers may also need to revisit herbicide products they aren’t currently using and some they haven’t used in years. Brown said some older chemistries may play a bigger role again, particularly in rotation or in tank mixes. However, product availability, crop safety and regional fit will be key considerations.

“To me, as a no-tiller, the No. 1 issue is going to be what we replace it with, and at this point, the actives that are registered are going to increase our costs significantly,” LaForge said.

“And it’s probably going to mean that we’ve got to bring back some active ingredients that we haven’t had for a while and just have higher levels of toxicity at the end of the day.”

Losing glyphosate would also push integrated weed management (IWM) to the forefront.

“Those tools have always been there,” Brown said.

“In the past, we haven’t used those tools as effectively as we could. But we’re going to have to now because we won’t have a choice.”

Brown stressed the value of crop competition: adjusting seeding dates, seeding rates, row spacing and cultivar selection all help. However, the biggest lever, she said, is crop rotation.

“Crop diversity is probably the single biggest thing we need to do when it comes to weed control,” she said.

Life cycle diversity — mixing annuals and perennials, or at least spring and fall crops — can help break weed cycles and reduce reliance on any single product or practice.

Beckie’s paper indicated how Canadian farmers may have a leg up over their Australian counterparts when it comes to managing glyphosate resistance.

In Western Canada, about 40 per cent of canola acres are planted to herbicide-resistant varieties, but resistance hasn’t taken off the way it has in Australia. That’s largely thanks to the widespread use of glufosinate-tolerant cultivars and more diverse crop rotations.

Still, Beckie warned, losing glyphosate as a pre-harvest option would hit hard in pulse crops, where there are few good alternatives for controlling tough perennial weeds.

Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) is another tool Brown mentioned, and it also played a central role in Beckie’s post-glyphosate scenario. Originally developed in Australia — where herbicide resistance evolved faster and hit harder — HWSC focuses on capturing or destroying weed seeds at harvest to prevent them from replenishing the seed bank.

Beckie’s modelling leaned heavily on this strategy, especially in the absence of effective pre-harvest herbicides.

HWSC has also been gaining traction in Canada and could become more relevant as farmers look for non-chemical ways to keep weed populations in check.

“You want to destroy the weed seeds, or you want to move them, or take them off the field and not let them add to the weed seed bank,” Brown said.

Tillage remains an option, and Brown noted that it’s something most farms already have the equipment to do — but bringing tillage back as a primary weed control tool comes with consequences.

Brown pointed out that glyphosate was instrumental in the widespread adoption of minimum- or zero-till systems, and that if it’s no longer available, it could set things back significantly.

“There’s going to be many negative consequences with that,” she said, “including soil degradation, increased greenhouse gases and even just fuel consumption.”

Hence at LaForge’s farm, for example, tillage is just not an option.

“If we have to go back to tillage in this part of the world, we (would) probably decrease our yields instantly by 30 to 40 per cent,” given the amount of soil moisture that would be lost in the process, LaForge said.

The availability of glyphosate has increased the diversity and productivity of the farm’s rotations and “created a whole new level of soil conservation in this area.”

There’s some hope on the horizon.

Brown pointed to emerging technologies such as laser weeding, electrocution, steam weeding and the potential for new herbicides or non-traditional weed control products. Much of this innovation, she said, is being driven by the urgency of the current situation.

“There’s a lot of research being done because of the very situation that we’re in right now,” she said.

Extension specialists such as Brown will play a key role in helping farmers adjust. She said the core message around integrated weed management isn’t changing, but the urgency and scope of that message are growing.

“We’re just going to have to get a lot more educated on some of these products that are out there that we need to be using,” she said.

“We have to raise that level of comfort, because that will be new territory for many farmers.”

The post What would happen if Roundup disappeared? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Signs of these financial impacts are already emerging. Bayer shares fell sharply to a 20-year low on Tuesday, after the chemical company warned that weak global agricultural markets and a slumping U.S. farm economy are likely to pressure profits further.

Agrichemical competitors Syngenta, Corteva and the agriculture unit of Germany’s BASF could also face challenges in the sector, analysts said.

Nearly one-third of all the pesticides and fungicides that Paul Butler uses on his Illinois soybean and corn farm are generic to help him cut costs in a tight year, he said.

Fellow Illinois grain grower Jeff O’Connor is doing the same. “It’s like if you grew up eating Fruity Pebbles and now you go to Dollar General and get Fruity Bites,” he said.

Despite the cost savings, farmers say there can be drawbacks to downgrading. Manufacturers of generic chemicals typically do not cover the cost of respraying if the product does not work, said Caleb Hamer, an Iowa corn and soy farmer.

Still, Midwestern distributors and grain elevators say they have seen customers cutting back their spring pesticide and herbicide budgets.

Some farmers are shifting away from branded products, said Matt Carstens, chief executive of farm cooperative Landus and agricultural financing company Conduit. Others are investing in equipment that targets and treats weeds and pests in their fields – allowing them to buy less herbicides and pesticides altogether, he said.

“It comes down to this: What does the farmer really need? Do they need a name brand, with protection insurance and complaint policies backing it? Do they need to pay for all of that?” Carstens said.

Off-patent chemistry

When it comes to chemistry, a farmer’s buying decisions often are rooted in the seed.

Farmers typically base their chemical purchases with trait-specific seeds they want – such as ones that produce a drought-tolerant crop or can withstand herbicide applications that kill weeds without harming the plant.

If there is a generic option to brand-name herbicides, and the seeds that a farmer purchases can tolerate it, then it can makes sense to go with a less expensive product, said Mac Marshall, founder of agriculture advising firm Balcony View Consulting.

The number of generics available to farmers is growing. The patent for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and the world’s most widely used herbicide, expired in 2000, according to Rabobank agricultural analysts Owen Wagner and Sam Taylor.

More than two dozen active ingredient patents have expired in the past five years – spurring a boom in off-patent use, which now accounts for about 80 per cent of the agrichemical market share, they said.

Now, with farmers facing weak margins this spring, they’re more likely to look for cost savings among their fertilizer or crop protection chemicals, Taylor said.

— Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago

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Canada’s Pest Management Review Agency approved Garlon XRT herbicide, the first industrial vegetation product with drone application on the label.

“We are the first company to have a pesticide registered with PMRA for drone application,” said Mark Versluys, specialties business leader for Corteva Agriscience in Calgary.

“There is no other pesticide in Canada that has drone application on the label,” he said.

Versluys said the data collection and processing of the information required for approval took many months before the company received approval from PMRA.

Now, the herbicide can be sprayed by drone under utility right-of-ways, transmission lines, oil and gas leases and on steep mountainous terrain, anywhere Garlon was already registered for use in industrial areas. The approval does not extend to drone spraying for agricultural use.

Versluys said Corteva will continue to collect data and work with PMRA to have other pesticides registered for application by drone in the future.

“This isn’t just a one and done. This is the first step in a very exciting journey,” he said.

“I think the future looks very bright.”

Markus Weber, president of Landview Drones, said while the door is open a crack, PMRA needs to do more to add drone application registration for agricultural use to existing labels. Approving one herbicide at a time will take five to 10 years before there is a large selection of chemistry available for farmers.

Weber said ideally, he would hope PMRA would approve any chemical for drones that is now approved for aircraft.

“To me that is ultimately the way that we need to do this. It can’t just be label by label,” he said at the Agriculture in Motion farm show held northwest of Saskatoon.

In the first hour of the show, more than 120 farmers showed up for a drone demonstration.

“It is incredible. Farmers see this as a tool primarily for three things: brush control, pasture fungicide application and desiccant application.”

Pest control products can’t legally be sprayed by drone, but farmers see the potential, he said.

“Now that drones can fly large acreages and spraying can be done quickly and reliably, they see the potential, but they just can’t because the label doesn’t allow them to.”

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