Text of a presentation made on February 24, 2004 by Scott Day, a farmer and ag. advisor in Manitoba, Canada, at a seminar at the CSIRO in Perth, Australia.
Presented by Crabtree Agricultural Consulting, Northam, Western Australia

I farm with my wife Ann, daughter Alex and my parents David and Claire Day in South West, Manitoba about 40 miles from Saskatchewan and 20 miles from the USA. We farm almost in the dead centre of North America.
Our farm has a small hog finishing operation and slightly over 1400 acres of crop production. For the past 15 years I have also worked as the Provincial agronomist in the area where I live and farm. We have been zero-tilling for over 10 years and were fortunate to win the Canadian zero-till farmer of the year award from the Manitoba-North Dakota zero-till Farmers’ Association in 1999. We grow or have grown: Red Spring wheat, winter wheat, malt and feed barley, durum wheat and canola (in all the systems: Conventional, Roundup Ready, Liberty Link and Clearfield). We grow Pinto beans and peas have grown lentils and have tried to grow sunflowers. Flax and oats are popular crops in our area as well but we don’t grow these crops. Corn and soybeans are making their way into our area and may be crops we will consider in the future.

It is impossible to have a definitive single statement “for” and “against” Genetically Modified crops. It is like having only a “for” or “against” opinion for chemicals. However, GM canola has been very important to our farm and to agriculture in Western Canada. If a farmer comes to me looking for advice on which canola variety to grow (unless there are some pretty extenuating circumstances like organic farming) I will always recommend a GM variety.

I first encountered GM Canola and in particular Roundup Ready Canola in 1987 the summer after I graduated from the University of Manitoba. That summer I was in charge of herbicide research at an independent research farm near our farm. At that time Monsanto was not involved, my work was with a company out of California called Calgene. The weed control was excellent and the crop tolerance was fine, the company was very happy with the results. It wasn’t until 5 or 6 years later that the RR patent that we use today was granted in Canada. The most popular variety in Canada at that time was the one that had the RR gene that summer, then in 1989 that variety became extremely susceptible to blackleg which probably delayed the introduction of RR canola until the mid-90’s. In that time frame Calgene was purchased by Monsanto. That is approaching 17 years ago and I can take you back to that exact research site and show you that everything there is normal.

Canola production in Canada generally fluctuates around the 5 million hectare range. Production has been highly variable with some recent extreme droughts out west but it has gone from a high of 9 Mt in 1999 to a low of 3500 t in 2002.

In 2003 about 50% of the canola acres in Canada were Roundup Ready varieties, 21% were Liberty Link varieties and 21% were Clearfield varieties. Less than 10% were conventional varieties. In 2004 I expect the acreage and percentage of GM to grow even higher. The small acreage of conventional canola is actually larger than expected because of that 10% there is a large percentage of Identity preserved contract canola’s for specialty oil markets. These specialty canolas will be available with GM traits this coming year. With well over 90% of the canola acres containing some sort of GM trait it is obvious that farmers are choosing them for a variety of reasons and that they are very useful to western Canadian Farmers. It is interesting to note that we still have over 30 registered conventional canola varieties available to purchase if we choose to do so. It is simply that most do not choose to do so for reasons I will mention later.

I have grown RR Canolas in the past but not for the last 5 years, as we have generally focused on the Liberty Link varieties. The Liberty Link varieties have been available with Hybrid seed, while the other systems have not. These hybrids have generally performed better regardless of whether or not they were transgenic. There are now a couple of Hybrid RR canolas for the first time and we may take a look at them again in the future especially if we are looking at some really dirty land or new land. We also like Liberty Link because you never have to worry about volunteers with the LL system with your preseed burn down containing glyphosate. Also we are long time zero-tiller’s and we use glyphosate on a regular basis so we don’t want to use it in crop on a regular basis as well. Basically, Liberty Link provides a good herbicide rotation opportunity. LL also doesn’t have the paper work and fee required that the Technical Use Agreement presents with the RR system.

Liberty Link acres would probably be higher if it wasn’t for the fact that they seem to run out of seed every year usually 5-6 months prior to seeding. The ability to produce large volumes of quality hybrid seed has not been easy in Canada, they are now growing some of these acres in the Maritimes.

A pretty extensive survey was done in Western Canada that captured the opinions of 650 growers on GM canola from ‘97-‘00. Here are some of the results extrapolated over most of the prairies:

• Farmers felt they saw a 10% yield increase with GMO’s (168kgs. /ha).
• They felt dockage was considerably less with GM’s.
• There was a 40% reduction in herbicide costs, there was also an estimated 6000t reduction in herbicides used on canola on these farms.
• 1.05 million hectares of additional reduced tillage acres was attributed to the adoption of GM Canola.
• This adoption of zero-till acres translates into a 31.2 million litres of fuel saved in 2000.

I have heard of a report where GMO’s have caused an increase of 50 million pounds of pesticides being applied in the USA, I think this report has been reported in Australia as well. I have no idea where they came up with that statement even the way it is stated sends off alarm bells. For instance, pounds of pesticide is not a unit of measurement that is relevant, and pounds of what pesticide? Maybe the products we now use are much safer? In any event we grow GM canola, corn, and soybeans in Manitoba in all cases I know these farmers use less pesticides on a pound for pound basis than if they were grown conventionally.

There has been some concern with unexpected GM canola varieties showing up where they were not intended to be. In one canola seed survey in Manitoba virtually all of the samples from certified seed were found to have at least some of one GM trait that was not supposed to be there. This was felt to be a problem back during the breeding of this seed. But contamination could occur at other times in the seed production from cleaning to bagging and even contamination on the farm. The bottom line is that there is a good chance that any sample of certified canola seed will have a very small percentage of some GM material that was not labeled. However, most if not all farmers are aware of this and treat any volunteer canola situation as having the potential for glyphosate resistance. This means using some sort of broadleaf herbicide mixed in with your glyphosate to kill volunteer canola in your pre-seeding burndown. This has become common practice anyway to help the glyphosate control ‘hard to kill’ broadleaves like dandelion, absinthe, and kochia. As complicated as this problem may sound this problem has rarely been a concern with the majority of farmers since the introduction of GM’s. In fact in 1994 a combination of weird weather and other management practices lead to Volunteer Canola being named the weed of the year by our Ag Department. This was before anyone was using GM Canola. Since that year where we have seen the wide spread use of GM Canola we have never even considered volunteer canola to be the weed of the year. Obviously GM canola has not created a terrible volunteer control situation. Besides if this was the case we wouldn’t see farmer’s continuing to grow GM canola in increasing numbers to the point that well over 90% of the acres are GM.

However, the fact that GM traits have shown up in all types of canola means that Canadian farmers cannot guarantee that any canola, regardless of where it was produced, is absolutely free of GMO’s. This has been a concern to the organic industry depending on what level of GM material is allowed in their markets. To put this in perspective organic canola was about 0.06% of the total production in the late 90’s. Since then Organic growers have not been able to get canola certified organic for the most part. Beyond that though non adopters of GM canola have been unable to keep out GM canola from their fields and that is an issue that still has not been adequately addressed.

It is important to keep in mind that once GM canola is “out there” it is going to be very hard to keep it segregated from non-GMO canola or to “bring it all back”. We can talk about pollen flow or seed contamination but an interesting situation occurred near my district that illustrates this problem. A couple of years ago a tornado went through a swathed field of RR Canola near Killarney Manitoba. We have no idea where that seed came down. However, to my knowledge there were not any calls of concern from this area in the fall this occurred or the following year when volunteers would have started to show up.

GM canola has been a very important tool in the war against herbicide resistant weeds. Their use in this regard cannot be overstated. We have resistant Wild Oats, Green Foxtail, Wild Mustard and Kochia along with some other weeds. Another benefit of GM Canola that is often not adequately addressed is the reduction in herbicide in your whole crop production system. If you know you are growing canola in the next year you will not spend as much money cleaning up the current crop (this is contrary to what we would do with conventional canola), also in the crop following GM canola we will often not need to spend as much to keep that crop clean. For instance we may reduce or eliminate the grass herbicide in the cereal crop that usually follows canola because we know the crop would have been pretty clean the year before. GM canola is now used as a clean up crop and is now being seeded directly into forage crops which would have been very risky with conventional canola. So when you look at GM canola you have to look at the benefits to the whole cropping system and not just the year of production of that crop.

There is no segregation of GM and non-GM canola in Canada. GM Canola is accepted in all of our major markets; Canada, USA, Japan, Mexico, and China. Europe did import canola from Canada for the first few years that we were growing GM Canola but the amount was quite small. Since they stopped importing from North America they have been exporting almost the same amount of canola as they have been importing. While lack of access to the European market is hard to assess it has not been that significant as our canola is as popular as ever.
GM crops are now grown all over the world on all continents except the Antarctic. Even in Europe over 100,000 acres were planted to GM crops in 2003.

If we were to hold a GM Canola information meeting in Western Canada dealing with the issue of GMO’s very few people would show up, as after almost 10 years of experience there is virtually “no issue” any more. I know because I was part of such a meeting and warned that attendance would be low. There are still some ongoing court cases against companies that sell GM canola however these cases were initiated by a very small and specific segment of the farm community. These cases could have profound affects on GM Canola in Canada but the vast majority of producers do not want to see this option taken away.

I earlier stated that it is impossible to have one opinion on GMO’s and here is an example – Most prairie farmers do not want GM (RR) wheat but most of us want GM canola. GM corn and soybeans are also becoming very popular but there is pretty widespread support to prevent GM wheat entering the market place. This is a very complicated issue but the main reasons we don’t want it is because we don’t need it, the market is totally unproven and likely not accommodating and we don’t want to deal with RR wheat volunteers. This is why the GM issue to so complicated and hard to explain to those outside agriculture.

Dr. Patrick Moore is a Canadian who was one of the founders of Greenpeace and the former head of that organization in the early 1980’s. He is now apparently a strong proponent of GM technology; here are some of the quotes from a speech he gave in our local city, Brandon, two years ago. As reported in the Manitoba Cooperator on Jan 19th 2002: ‘I believe the campaign of fear now waged against genetic modification is based largely on fantasy… and a more complete lack of respect for science and logic’.

‘In the balance it is clear the real benefits of genetic modification far outweigh the hypothetical and sometimes contrived risks claimed by its detractors’.

Interesting words from the former head of Greenpeace, one of the strongest opponent groups to GMO technology.

Much of this negative coverage of GMO’s I feel is a result of a lack of trust or true respect for the farmer, people don’t understand that we can make decisions for ourselves. I think Australia is probably like Canada where farmers actually have strong support from the urban public, everyone thinks we work hard and farming is difficult but their support is often in a patronizing way. I can’t think of a single contemporary movie or TV show where a farmer has been portrayed as anything more than ‘simple’ or ‘evil’. With this unfortunate stereotype repeated on a regular basis the urban public doesn’t realize that many of us are highly educated or informed and are perfectly capable of making rational intelligent decisions to best suit our family and farms. I often get the impression that these detractors are trying to save us from our own ignorance without understanding that we aren’t as ignorant as they think (or hope). This is something we need to keep in mind the next time we are interviewed or we write a letter to the editor or to a politician.

My first cousin was taking a conflict management class at University a couple of years ago and asked me to come in to address one of his classes about GMO use on Canadian farms. What was intended to be a one hour lecture turned into an entire afternoon with the students (4hours) as many of them had these very definite opinions about how I should farm without ever actually meeting a farmer before. It was a very positive experience for me and hopefully for them as well. We, as farmers the world over, need to make ourselves available for opportunities like this.

What about the Future for GM Canola?

It is limitless but we can see more varieties with GM traits being available. Hybrid seed will likely increase significantly in the non Liberty Link systems as well. Hybridisation will probably eliminate the TUA (Technical Use Agreement that includes a fee often $15) with RR canola seed.

· We will see those functional specialty oil canolas become available with GM traits.
· We will see some new disease and insect resistance traits in the near future
· We will see shatter resistance in the future as well, possibly solving that elusive goal of being able to straight combine canola.

GM Canola is vital to the success of our farm and the ability of our farm to be managed zero-till. Zero-till has provided so many benefits to our farm that it is impossible to overstate the importance of us to be able to farm without tillage. Soil erosion had been reduced to almost nil on our farm, how can you properly account for that? Then there is the benefit of retained moisture and carbon in zero-till that is not only important to me as a farmer but also the public in general. You can zero-till without GM canola but it is much more difficult and requires many more herbicides and is less successful. Without GM canola zero-till acres would be much less. 90% of the Canola acres in Western Canada are GM despite still having the opportunity to buy many different types of conventional canola varieties. The positive reasons for GM Canola are pretty clear in that statistic alone.