Herbicide makers appear to be undermining a program allowing farmers to buy cheaper U.S. chemicals, by charging prohibitive fees for the disposal of empty containers, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) charged today.
The web site where farmers may pre-pay disposal fees for chemicals they import under the Grower Requested Own Use (GROU) program was launched recently with the support and involvement of CFA, among other farm groups. But the national farmers’ group said it may have to rethink its support of GROU if chemical manufacturers continue “playing games” with farmers who use it.
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Under GROU, farmers who import products from the U.S. must dispose of their empties through a centralized system. Chemical companies have set their disposal fees for empty containers at 15 cents per litre for those smaller than 23 litres and 25 cents per litre for those larger than 23 L, CFA said in a release.
“In some cases this will make the end cost of imported products more expensive than had the products been purchased in Canada, negating the intended benefit of the program,” the federation wrote.
Five herbicides are approved for farmers to import under GROU: Basagran, Reflex, Touchdown IQ, Roundup Weathermax and Banvel II/Clarity. Three others were pulled from the program earlier this summer, also drawing protests from CFA.
CFA also said import rules remain unclear how an automatic trigger mechanism will work to activate the Own-Use Import (OUI) program, a related chemical import program for Canadian farmers that allows generic products in the U.S. to be rated as equivalent to registered name-brand domestic products.
These factors add up “to a deliberate effort to undermine the whole program,” said CFA president Bob Friesen, who farms at Wawanesa, Man., south of Brandon. “The industry needs price discipline, but the manufacturers are trying to find ways to keep price gouging.”
