The OFVGA has been very active over the past few months, presenting to the Agriculture and Agri-Food Standing Committee; developing and submitting its plan for the future – Horticulture: Healthy Benefits For All (click for pdf); and is hoping to establish a business case for a province-wide roll out of the school snack program.

The health benefits of fruits and vegetables are undeniable, and, as an organization, we intend to bring as much information on its vital health care component to the forefront of today’s consumers.

In addition, the OFVGA continues to be at the forefront of the “Buy Local, Buy Ontario, Buy Canadian” campaign. If you need a speaker or would simply like to inquire about programs and how they can be developed in your area, please contact Jamie Reaume <mailto:editor@thegrower.org>  or Alison Robertson <mailto:aroberston@ofvga.org>  (school snack program)  – and we’ll be glad to assist you in any way possible.

HORT STRATEGY

The Ontario horticultural industry recently received $30-million in badly needed funding from governments to offset the adverse effects of increased energy costs, currency appreciation, and increased penetration of imports.

While this is an important step, it should also sound a note of caution for Ontario horticulture. What steps are in place to suggest that the same situation that resulted in the need for public assistance will not repeat itself in the future? Indeed, as events unfold such as the closure of key Ontario processing facilities, in the absence of proactive measures to the contrary, calls for public assistance will only be repeated in the future.

This prospect is somewhat daunting, because if solutions were readily at hand they would already have been implemented. At the same time, the role of government as industry “rescuer” has bounds; in order to have the long-term support of government; industry must be willing to independently position itself toward solutions.

For both the family businesses and larger organizations involved in the farm, wholesaling, and processing chain, the challenges facing horticulture must be met primarily with commercial solutions to be sustainable.
           
Confronting these challenges requires recognition of the opportunities and threats faced by Ontario horticulture:

• The regions with suitable soils and microclimates that support horticultural crops in Ontario are located centrally relative to large and affluent domestic markets and key regions in the U.S.

• Ontario is becoming a largely urban-based, knowledge economy as reflected in its human resources and employee expectations of stability and high wage rates. Horticulture is highly seasonal and highly labour-intensive. As immigration and anti-terrorism rules tighten, seasonal movement of off-shore labour is increasingly difficult

• Capital investment and technology adoption flow rapidly and largely unimpeded between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors of the Canadian economy, and across countries

• The productivity of horticultural food processing has lagged compared with key competitors

• The horticultural value chain is highly fragmented, and has failed to manage up to its potential
           
Thus, Ontario is blessed with, a highly skilled workforce consistent with discovery and the application of technology, and with horticultural market opportunities provided by geography.

Conversely, horticulture faces challenges in access to and cost of less skilled labour, an environment in which investment and technological improvements are quickly dispersed to competitors, and a situation in which farm and downstream segments have not meshed sufficiently to exploit market opportunities nor to induce improvements in productivity. In the main, these are not cyclical issues that will revert to a more favorable situation for horticulture given sufficient time.
           
In this environment, what are the sources of sustainable comparative advantage that horticulture can proactively advance? Sources of cost advantage based on cheap resources, like land, water, energy, or people simply do not apply to Ontario. In fact, as the world has become a smaller place, a source of comparative advantage must ultimately be created for Ontario horticulture.
           
Creation of ideas and knowledge is research and innovation, and here Ontario has a distinct comparative advantage, especially relative to competing nations that have a significant cost advantage owing to labour. We must find a way in which we take the expensive resources we have as given, and generate more, better, or different products from them compared with what our competitors can do.
           
Research and innovation is relatively intangible to many in the industry, and has not been the core of policy related to horticulture in the past. And it is clear that research and innovation must be an ongoing effort to be successful, precisely because low-cost competitors will adopt or otherwise copy innovations we develop. However, this is the one clear source of advantage we have over many of our competitors. Moreover, if the industry aspires to grow or even maintain itself without relying on heavy doses of ongoing government funds, this appears to be the strategy that can lead a path forward.
           
With this in mind, the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association is nearing completion of a research and innovation strategy. This holds the prospect of, over time, turning the difficult situation faced by the industry more toward opportunity and growth and away from rearguard and protective actions. It requires the attention of the grassroots, and the recognition of its significance to policy going forward in order to be successful.

GLOBAL MINOR USE SUMMIT
FAO, Rome Italy
Dec 3-7 2007

Minor Use Pesticide issues have dominated grower agendas in Ontario and indeed Canada for the past 30 years. The development of a coordinated National Minor Use program under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) in 2002, with adequate funding for them and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) of Health Canada, was seen by growers as a very positive step toward resolution of the long-standing problem. One of the key paths forward was the early development of a strong bond between the Canadian program and the US minor use program known as IR-4 (Inter-regional Project #4). This relationship has led to much joint work, data sharing, collaboration in research, data development, company visits, and the camaraderie that allows further work to occur.

There has also been a regular dialogue on Minor Use with other countries, notably the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, and Mexico (under NAFTA). The idea of a global conference was spawned in about 2003, due to mounting pressures within and outside of the USA.

The IR-4 program has achieved huge success, and since the late 1990s has come close to 1000 new clearances annually. This has allowed US producers access to the widest array of crop protection tools of any nation in the world. This in turn has created its own set of challenges. Trade in treated commodities between nations is restricted, from a pesticide residue standpoint, by the setting (or not) of ‘MRL’ (Maximum Residue Limit) tolerances. The US began to find restriction of market access for some treated commodities, as other countries were at various lagged stages of registration, and/or setting of import tolerances, for the pesticides they (the US) were cleared to use and for which they had domestic tolerances. In Canada, we had long felt that the US had a distinct production and marketing advantage as a result of the IR-4 program. This was especially true since we have a ‘default residue tolerance’ of 0.1 ppm allowing treated commodities into Canada, without even an import tolerance, if the pesticide residue was below the default.

At the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the international issues regarding Minor Use has led to an ‘Expert Group on Minor Use to deal with the problems, as they affect many nations. The slowness of the CODEX process to set international residue tolerances was recognized as a barrier to trade, and effort has been made to expedite this tolerance setting process.

In addition to all of the foregoing, the emergence of new ‘private MRL standards’ by international trading companies such as supermarket chains, or wineries has created new challenges to both trade and crop production with regard to pesticide use and/or residues that threaten production practices world-wide. For many countries, a change in allowable residues cannot be dealt with by a simple switch to using another pesticide: the ‘other pesticide’ does not legally exist for their use in most cases.

The Global conference discussed all these issues and came up with the following recommendations.

Synthesis of Recommendations

Communication
• Facilitate the development of a platform for a global grower network
• Regulatory Agencies develop communication messages on the meaning of ‘MRLs’
• Develop a system to identify global Minor Use crop/pest combination needs
• Continue global collaborations’
• Facilitate a Global Minor Use Summit II
• Expand and use the established Minor Use List Server as a communication tool

Data Generation for Residue and Efficacy
• Continue to support the best use of data in the following areas:
- Global Zoning
- Extrapolation/Crop Grouping
- Efficacy Data Sharing
• Develop the process and the protocols that facilitate a Global Residue Program

Data Sharing
• Develop a common portal consisting of the national data and information web-site to facilitate data sharing
• Develop a reliable publicly available database of current and ongoing residue and efficacy studies throughout the world
• Harmonize formats, data structure and codes and code systems

Crop Grouping
• Support CODEX efforts to establish a comprehensive crop classification grouping scheme for residue
• Advance the concept of representative crops into the CODEX crop classification scheme
• Encourage the development of a harmonized global crop grouping scheme for efficacy data

Harmonization
• Continued support for multi-lateral review efforts and simultaneous approvals
• Extend multi-lateral review work of new active ingredients to cover label expansions
• Support on-going FAO and OECD guideline development for minor uses
-GAPs
Residue definitions
Methods for establishing MRLs
Dietary Risk Assessment
• Explore the concept to establish CODEX MRLs before national MRLs for jointly reviewed new A.I.s

Other Items
• Propose to establish a CODEX Minor Use working group
• Support establishment of government funded IR-4 “like” programs
• Encourage incentives for the development of label expansion for minor uses
• Maintain adequate number of efficacious crop protection tools to manage pest resistance
• Facilitate the solution to the ‘Crop damage liability’ situation

In Summary
This conference was one of the best I have ever been privileged to attend. The positive approach to outcomes was evident throughout every session. Every participant was empowered to add to the collective discussion and outcome of the meeting. The government representatives were clearly willing to listen and take note of the concerns and suggestions that were raised.
I have all the materials that were handed out and the submitted presentations of all the speakers for anyone’s perusal. They are also available at the following web site: http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPP/Pesticid/JMPR/GMUS/Presentations.htm
The delegates are now on an E-mail server for further updates. I will keep our members abreast of all future developments and outcomes.
I give my thanks to the Agriculture Adaptation Council for the funding that made possible my attendance, on behalf of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers.