“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.

The post Gulf war fallout pushes crop chemical prices higher for Western Canadian farmers appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

To date, only pesticides registered for use with drones — often called remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) — can legally be applied by drones. Almost none are registered for drone application.

WHY IT MATTERS: The proposed regulations would make many existing pesticides available for application by drone. To date, almost no products have been made available for legal application by drone — though anecdotal evidence suggests drone application is happening on the down low.

Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) proposes to allow currently registered products, where the label permits aerial application — that is, by fixed wing or rotary aircraft — to be applied by drone.

Applicators would need to comply with all the label directions for aerial application, including spray volume, application rate, droplet size, treatment interval and spray buffer zones.

When used according to aerial application instructions, the PMRA said, drone application is not expected to impact the value of the pesticide being applied.

Based on data from global studies, spray drift with drone application is similar to ground application. Spray buffer zones established for conventionally-piloted rotary wing aircraft will be adequate. The PMRA also said pesticide residues on food crops are not higher than with conventional applications.

The PMRA said there isn’t enough data for a full risk assessment on safety risks of operators exposure to pesticides; however, it says available evidence suggests it’s “unlikely to be higher than with conventional equipment” — particularly because tasks such as mixing, loading and application must be done by different people, just as with other aerial spraying.

Consultations opened on Feb. 23 and close March 25.

Drone pilots would still require the relevant licenses from Transport Canada.

PMRA passes five-year mark on regulation studies

The PMRA began studying drone regulations in 2019. In September, members of the federal standing committee on agriculture asked the PMRA’s senior director general Frédéric Bissonette what was taking so long.

Bissonette cited scientific issues — for example, that a drone did not behave the same as an airplane — and pledged to have “something in place for next year.”

“Canada seems to be kind of falling behind other jurisdictions in terms of allowing this type of use,” CropLife Canada CEO Pierre Petelle told Glacier FarmMedia in late 2025.

“With these products being used in many other western-type jurisdictions … there should be ways of coming to conclusions much quicker than we have,” he added.

Crop protection companies, meanwhile, have been conducting studies to collect drone-specific data for their products.

Anecdotal evidence suggested farmers were using already drones to apply pesticides on the down low.

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Macrosteles quadrilineatus injects a phytoplasma into the plant that affects its hormones; where you get green things where you should have yellow things in canola and you get leaves instead of seeds.

The leafhoppers spread aster yellows that affect over 300 plants including crops like canola, wheat and carrots as a generalist pest. Testing for leafhopper aster yellows infection using laboratory and field-adaptable DNA extraction has improved by leaps and bounds. Confirmation comes within a half-an-hour compared to a week previously.

WHY IT MATTERS: The speed at which Western Canadian pests can be identified and the conditions and best practices used in combating them are crucial in saving yields in various crops including canola.

“Where do the leafhoppers come from, and when they come in, how infected are they? This is the key to the outbreaks,” said Dr. Tyler Wist, a research scientist in field crop entomology during his Pest-Side Story presentation at the 2026 Irrigated Crop Production Update in Lethbridge, Alta.

“There are a few different hypotheses going around. One, they come all the way up from Texas. Two, they come up and they hang around in Nebraska, Kansas, and then they come up. Some years they don’t even get all the way to Canada on this northward (wind) migration.”

Aster yellows affect on canola yields seem to be linked to water/moisture levels according to some of Wist’s and his colleagues research. Wist showed graphs of big outbreaks in May 2012 and May 2023, with a wide variance of moisture levels at the time. The much drier season in 2023 resulted in less damage overall, backed by an 2015 Elliott/Olivier study of leafhopper feeding density with corresponding canola seed yield in dry and wet conditions.

“It was really hot and dry in 2023. The canola wasn’t as trashed as I expected. I was catching leafhoppers that were infected over 61 per cent of the population, which is completely unheard of for aster yellows hoppers coming up here,” said Wist.

A working hypothesis is with canola seed treated with insecticide, it kills the leaf hopper alongside the flea beetle. Under dry soil conditions, most of the leafhoppers died with 24 hours and did not affect the plants.

Under the wet soil conditions, only about half of the leafhoppers died with the rest remaining to hang around and feed on the plant.

Most conditions cut down on the impact of the insecticides by taking a lot out of the root zone, where the plant does not pick it up, allowing the leafhopper to survive longer as a vector and increasing the chance of aster yellows infestation.

“Aster yellows went down under these dry soil conditions in 2023. Things that didn’t have a seed treatment, like carrots, peas, sunflowers and the whole cut flower industry in northern Alberta were just absolutely hammered by aster yellows,” said Wist.

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What if, instead of blanket spraying an entire field to wipe out invading insects, you gave them something to munch on that you want them to eat?

Trap cropping — where plants favoured by a pest insect are planted to draw insects away from a main cash crop (usually planted later) — is making new inroads with farmers, particularly those with small to mid-sized fields and who want to lower insecticide use, according to Héctor Cárcamo, a senior research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: Spray costs, resistance concerns and increasing awareness of beneficial insects have driven more research attention to integrated pest management practices. In some cases, that’s meant taking a leaf out of our grandparents’ book.

Speaking to pulse growers near Taber, Alta., in December, Cárcamo pointed to various Prairie research projects testing the concept in pest hot spots.

Trap cropping relies on the idea that, by concentrating pests in designated areas for food and egg laying, farmers can monitor and manage the pest population more efficiently. Maybe they can limit their spraying to that limited area, or release beneficial insects.

Spraying a smaller area might mean less input cost, while also keeping things friendlier for beneficial insects and making control efforts more targeted and precise.

Matchmaking pests and trap crops

The secret is finding which trap crop will draw the most pests away from the crop the farmer is trying to protect, Cárcamo said.

For faba bean growers, lygus bugs are one pest insect they’d like to keep well clear of their fields. They also might be enough of a picky eater for trap crops to work.

Cárcamo’s work into trap crops against lygus bugs was highlighted by the Western Producer last year. At that time, the researcher noted that the pulse crop’s timing — filling pods while surrounding crops are drying down — tends to puts a target on the still juicy faba bean plants for any lygus bugs in the area.

Researchers tried various trap crops as bait, along with targeted insecticide and beneficial predator release. They tried mustard, canola, hemp and sunflowers.

Winter peas got a good jump in development, while spring-planted peas faced struggled to achieve the needed difference in crop staging compared to the protected crop. Of the seven crops tested, one was the clear lygus bug favourite.

“I’ll give you a hint. It’s yellow flowers and produces oil. Canola was the clear favourite,” Cárcamo said.

Sunflowers also showed potential, echoing results also seen in China with a different species of lygus bug.

Last year’s coverage of Cárcamo’s lygus bug work also noted that faba beans planted next to safflower showed less damage than those planted next to canola in 2022, and that safflower seemed to retain the pest insects for longer.

How realistic is it?

There is promise in trap cropping fields, those listening to Cárcamo’s presentation heard. At the same time, results will vary depending on the pest and specific strategies used. There’s timing, field arrangement, pest pressure and follow-up management like local spraying and beneficials introduction that are critical.

In the faba bean trial, for instance, while canola had lygus bugs flocking to the trap, it also had to be followed up with well-timed insecticide to keep the bugs from exploding back into the protected crop.

There’s also the question of how well it meshes with the average farms. Most farms on the Prairies today are large, with large fields. More complex and time consuming agronomic pest management alternatives may not be attractive.

“Trap cropping, you need to do things at different times and some farms have thousands and thousands of acres. If someone has the time, maybe they are retiring and want to play around, then try trap crops,” said Cárcamo.

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That simple idea sparked a four-year research project at the University of Manitoba, where Yvonne Lawley, associate professor of plant science, and Alejandro Costamagna, professor of entomology, have been testing whether standing cover from fall rye or spring-seeded nurse crops can reduce early feeding.

The work was demonstrated publicly at a University of Manitoba field day in Carman this past July.

WHY IT MATTERS: Flea beetles remain one of the Prairie’s most frustrating canola pests, and early feeding damage can push growers toward costly in-season sprays.

The concept started with a social media thread.

Several farmers had accidentally left fall rye standing too long in spring, then noticed their canola seedlings seemed to suffer less defoliation. Rather than brush off the anecdote, after a gentle nudge from her grad students, Lawley dipped her toe into the discussion, then quickly became immersed.

“Agronomists and farmers were sharing their collective observations in the social media space about this effect,” she said.

Those discussions led to a formal study with support from Manitoba Canola Growers and funding from CARP (Canola Agronomic Research Program). The goal was to test whether a living cover could shield canola long enough for seedlings to outgrow their most vulnerable stages.

Small-plot findings

Graduate student Aleksander Zashev walked tour attendees through four seasons of small-plot trials comparing fall rye termination timings. Late termination — holding off until canola reached the two-leaf stage — consistently led to less defoliation and fewer flea beetles. However, those same treatments also posed the highest risk of yield loss. In two of the four years, tall rye shaded the canola enough to drag yields down.

A clear pattern was emerging: more biomass meant more protection, but the added competition risked greater yield losses.

Spring-seeded oats were also evaluated as a nurse crop because they pose far less agronomic risk than fall rye. Oats emerge later and grow shorter, so they are far less likely to shade canola seedlings. The oat treatments produced little change in defoliation or flea beetle numbers, except in one case at a higher seeding rate. The results were predictable, but still useful: they reinforced the pattern seen with rye — biomass is the main driver of the hiding effect.

Lawley said the challenge is finding the sweet spot between maximum hiding and minimal shading. Waiting until canola reaches the two-leaf stage offers the strongest hiding effect, but that same biomass can shade seedlings and slow early growth.

Data showed the most balanced option was terminating when canola was still at the cotyledon stage. Because glyphosate doesn’t kill the rye immediately, the standing plants provide a short window of protection before they die off.

“We have a seven-day window before that fall rye is terminated,” said Lawley.

Taking it to the field

Graduate student Raquel Chinchin Talavera presented the on-farm phase of the study. That phase was launched in 2024 with four co-operating growers in the south-central region of the Red River Valley. Full-field strips, 36-metres wide, were seeded with and without a cover crop to see whether the small-plot trends hold under real farm conditions.

Early observations show slightly more flea beetles in bare canola strips than in strips with a living nurse crop, though the wider spacing between monitoring traps means overall counts are lower than in the small plots. Yield data from the second season is still pending.

While the research has validated that standing cover can interrupt flea beetle activity, Lawley wants growers to be cautious in how they interpret the early results. There are still many unknowns. Row orientation, stand density and fertility management could all influence outcomes. And, significantly, the agronomic costs (yield hits from competition, shading, moisture use and possible nitrogen tie-up) are real.

So, would Lawley recommend this for large acres at this point?

“No, we’re still working on it,” she said. “I feel like it’s still a high-risk practice for canola at this point.”

Where it could lead

Despite the uncertainty, she sees potential. Growers already experimenting with fall rye or spring nurse crops for soil health or weed management may one day be able to layer flea beetle suppression into those systems. But before any of this becomes a recommendation, researchers need to fine-tune the agronomy enough to reduce the risk of yield penalties.

The project concludes its CARP-funded phase after the 2025 season, but Lawley has already seeded more fall rye to continue teasing apart the variables. She hopes future work can answer questions about seeding rate, termination timing, nitrogen management and how to optimize cover without compromising stand establishment. The biggest unknown remains how the flea beetle feeding process is disrupted.

“We still don’t understand the mechanism of how flea beetles are seeing, smelling, sensing the canola, and how having living cover interrupts it,” she said.

“It would be worthwhile trying to understand that mechanism so we can optimize this practice.”

For now, the idea remains a promising possibility rather than a new tool — a reminder that Prairie innovation often starts with a farmer noticing something odd, and a curious researcher willing to follow the thread.

“We’ve validated the observation that cover crops can hide canola from flea beetles. Now we need to de-risk it.”

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Pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides are used to deal with pests, said Justin Pahara, research scientist and principal investigator in the Nano Lab, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Lethbridge.

“The way they work now is they’re broad spectrum, meaning when you spray them, they impact different other species, whether it is a plant, insect or fungi,” he said.

All these materials can present complications, which could easily be solved by nanotechnology.

The researchers focused their first series of tests on lygus bugs and cutworms.

Chemicals tend to target the nervous system of insects. Imidacloprid is the most used insecticide, and its molecule mimics nicotine. The chemicals are administered in low doses that do not impact humans and target major anatomical structures that exists across all insects.

Pahara and his team of five research assistants are working on new crop treatments which target pests at the level of DNA.

“DNA is specific to a particular organism,” said Pahara.

“When you go across a species, from a honeybee to a cutworm, their genomes are quite different. And this gives us the opportunity to leverage that through a couple different ways.”

There’s another molecule in cells called RNA, which is basically a copy of DNA.

“RNA is the intermediary between DNA and proteins, and there’s a very special pathway mechanism that happens in cells. If you put a small piece of very specific RNA into a cell that’s foreign to that cell, there’s a good chance the cell will recognize it as foreign, and then it will act similarly to an antibody and an immune response. It’ll use that little piece of DNA that it found to target and cut up more of the RNA it sees,” he said.

RNA is often used for viruses, because most viruses are RNA viruses.

“You don’t have to use it just for viruses. You can really use it for any sort of RNA in the plant. It could even be the plant or insect’s own RNA,” he said.

The new crop treatments will use RNA to target specific important things within a target insect.

“It’s highly technical, but basically, we’re targeting specific genomics or nucleic acid fingerprints within each (insect),” Pahara said.

The research team, which includes Pahara and students from the University of Lethbridge, the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, are developing methods to see where the nano systems are going into any insect, so they can design that RNA to be active, and target something that will work.

Pahara said a key target is to understand if things are sticking to insects and going inside them.

The team did some work at Canada’s Synchotron, based in Saskatoon. The Synchotron is a particle accelerator which accelerates electrons to the speed of light. Those electrons are then diverted and converted in high energy X-rays. These X-rays go into little rooms all around the Synchotron ring.

“The X-rays are about 10,000 times more than what a medical X-ray would be,” said Pahara.

To investigate treatments against lygus bugs, the team used different beam lines, which have different capabilities.

“The one we used is called the BioXAS. This one is cool, because it allows you to image something just like you would in a camera,” said Pahara.

But unlike a camera, the BioXAS pixels give a full spectrum of information and reveal atomic elements present in each pixel.

“You get this cool image, but within it, you’re able to probe and see exactly what chemical elements are there,” he said.

The researchers treated insects with nanoparticles and nucleic acids and watched where these elements went within the insect.

“By the chemical makeup of our nanoparticles, we’re able to detect them within the images that come out of the BioXAS equipment,” he said.

The BioXAS usually gives a two-dimensional image, but the researchers wanted a 3D image. They treated the insects with formulations, and then chopped them up into thin slices, so each insect was separated into 40 different slices, and then imaged.

“With the output image, we combined them back to create a three-dimensional object. We had this three-dimensional insect, where we could see where all the elements are in it. That’s important because it gives us three dimensions of spatial resolution, so we can see where stuff is going,” he said.

Using nanotechnology prevent pests from evolving a resistance to chemical control and keeps pest control tools available for producers by reducing their reliance on regulated chemicals. It also reduces the risk of non-tariff trade barriers and residue problems.

“We need new crop treatments,” said Pahara. “We need them to be less toxic.”

If crop treatments are determined to be so specific that they don’t harm other insects, let alone humans, that allows for a lot more freedom of use, he said.

If an insect’s DNA changes, crop treatments can also be adjusted, he said.

“It allows us to tweak and reprogram them easily, whereas with the old generation of treatments, they’re just small chemicals. You just can’t tweak them,” he said.

The research has now been expanded to fusarium head blight and kochia.

“We’re developing methods that work for screening, and we’re starting to ramp up screening, which means we’re testing lots of different kinds of formulations that have different nano materials in them. As we screen thousands of different systems, we’ll know the ones that may work best,” he said.

After material has been tested in the lab, it will eventually move to greenhouse trials and field trials.

The post Scientist working with nanotechnology to control pests in crops 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 event brought together growers, livestock producers, researchers, policymakers, and industry partners in celebration of Ontario’s agri-food sector.

Jocelyn Smith, an assistant professor of field crop entomology at Guelph, shared ongoing challenges facing farmers as pest-resistant crops continue to emerge in Ontario.

“Pests keep changing, and new pests come into Ontario. We need to learn about them,” she said, adding that her department continues to develop monitoring programs to test and evaluate new pest control products.

She noted that there is also ongoing evaluation of old economic thresholds in an effort to develop more cost-effective treatment options.

As of 2006, she said that there has been an increase of insecticide-resistant corn, with the most common pest threat being the European corn borer.

She said that 85 per cent of corn grown in Ontario is genetically modified. As of 2018, she noted that there has been resistance discovered in Nova Scotia.

To help slow the spread of resistance, she added that her team is partnering with organizations across Canada and the United States to develop further prevention programs.

Maximizing Calf Health

Michael Steele, a professor with the department of animal biosciences, continued the discussion, sharing updates on his team’s research to enhance the quality of breeding calves in Ontario.

He noted that 40 per cent of calves in Ontario are crossbred beef animals, as producers are breeding more of their lower end dairy cows to beef cows.

He added that research is also being done to reduce the level of microbial use during the early stages of calving. Genetic markers are also being traced among bulls to select the best breeding options.

The next stage of research, he added, is post-weaning nutrition. He said many calves are given a high-starch diet and that new research will explore if this is an environmentally friendly and healthy option, versus other diet alternatives.

The overall objective is to develop a better understanding of how pre-weaning nutritional and management factors can impact gastrointestinal development and metabolism during the pre-weaning phase and later in life.

For more of our coverage of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025, visit the Farmtario landing page.

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The draft document recommends that the administration promote healthier diets and examine vaccines and prescription drugs but stops short of advising any change to how the U.S. approves or regulates agrochemicals.

The Department of Health and Human Services, whose head, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairs the commission, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has worked to balance the demands of the MAHA movement aligned with Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic and former environmental lawyer, with the concerns of farmers and ranchers, a key Trump constituency.

A previous report from the MAHA commission issued in May pointed to pesticides, along with processed food and over-prescription of medications and vaccines, for increasing rates of childhood obesity, diabetes and other illnesses.

More than 250 groups representing farmers, ranchers, and agrochemical companies urged the Trump administration in June to seek their input on future MAHA Commission activities. The White House this summer held a series of meetings with food and farm groups to discuss the work of the commission.

The draft report says that the Environmental Protection Agency will work to inform the public of its pesticide review process and collaborate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote precision application of pesticides, which can reduce their overall use.

The EPA will consider exclusions from pollution laws for some farms and meat processing operations, the report says.

The report includes some existing priorities of the administration, like that HHS will investigate injuries from vaccines and prescription of antidepressants.

HHS and the Federal Trade Commission will explore guidelines to limit direct marketing of unhealthy foods to children and the administration will work to improve food quality in hospitals and prisons, the report says.

Along with Kennedy, the commission includes Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and other officials and cabinet members.

— By Leah Douglas, Ahmed Aboulenein and Jessica DiNapoli

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International regulations are a complex web for Canadian producers, speakers on a late-July Keep It Clean webinar warned.

“When you think about the different crops that are represented, our major field crops, canola, our cereals and our pulses, a large proportion of those are exported,” noted Krista Zuzak, director of crop protection and production for Cereals Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: Failing to follow the pesticide label or pre-harvest application windows sets farmers up for marketing issues and also risks Canada’s international trade reputation.

This export dependency means farmers must consider regulations beyond Canada’s borders, Zuzak added.

“Countries do have the right to set their standards and their rules that are around human and plant animal or environmental health,” she said.

Glufosinate-ammonium is a prime example, said Jeff English, vice-president of marketing and communications at Pulse Canada. While glufosinate-ammonium has generic registration for lentils in Western Canada, it shouldn’t be used due to misaligned and unset maximum residue limits, he warned.

Even glyphosate, widely used for pre-harvest weed control, carries market risks.

“We do have MRLs established in all major markets,” English said. However, the product is still flagged for caution because market acceptance varies based on end users.

Technology innovation meets trade reality

The disconnect between domestic approvals and international acceptance extends to new technologies. Zuzak pointed to spray drones as an example of innovation constrained by market considerations.

“While there are a lot of advancements in research happening around this technology, spray drones cannot yet be used to apply pesticides on field crops in Canada,” she said. “Currently, there aren’t any agriculture field crop chemicals or pesticides that have labels right now that authorize spray drone use.”

Applying via drone, besides being illegal, is thus also considered an off-label use and could pose a market risk.

Daily decisions carry global consequences

The complexity translates into detailed operational requirements for farmers.

Curtis Rempel, vice-president of crop production and innovation at the Canola Council of Canada, said that careful precision is required for glyphosate applications on canola.

“For canola staging, because of the indeterminate nature of the crop, it can be a little tricky, but we have enough research, and I think, enough visual guidelines now to really indicate that 30 per cent moisture is 50 to 60 per cent seed color change,” he said.

Farmers must also consider disease management for trade purposes.

Market-driven precaution

So far, the industry has adopted a precautionary approach where even legal products may be restricted based on market concerns rather than safety issues.

“We have our product advisory … which is annually updated, as well as our pre-harvest glyphosate staging guides and our pre harvest interval calculator,” Zuzak said.

The importance of farmer-buyer communication can’t be overstated, English said.

“We always recommend talking to your grain buyer before application, just to confirm as a fail safe.”

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