The western producer february 23, 2017

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2017

VOL. 95 | NO. 8 | $4.25

Women in Ag

REGULAR SERIES

The second in our three-part series looks at the power of networking. | P. 34

After the Farm Retirement can mean the beginning of a new lifestyle. | P. 28

SERVING WESTERN CANADIAN FARM FAMILIES SINCE 1923

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WWW.PRODUCER.COM

Cattle Call Learn about pain management and vaccine use. | P. 76

UNMONITORED Canada has no national monitoring system for pesticide residues in water, even though the government plans to ban some products

Sixty-five to 70 million acres of crop goes in the ground in Western Canada every spring. After seeding and into the summer, farmers apply tonnes of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides to control pests on those crops. In Alberta alone, data shows that 15.2 million kilograms of pesticide active ingredient were sold or shipped into the province in 2013. About 95 percent of the pesticides were used on Alberta farmland. However, even with the scale of the acreage and massive amount of pesticides applied, Environment Canada doesn’t routinely test ponds, wetlands and creeks across the Prairies for pesticides.

“There are no surface waters in Western Canada that don’t have pesticides in them,” said Allan Cessna, a semi-retired Environment Canada scientist who specializes in agricultural pesticides and their fate in the environment. Cessna, who still works a day or two per week at the National Hydrology Research Centre in Saskatoon, said the federal government monitors a handful of rivers that cross provincial borders for things such as heavy metals, nutrients and pesticides. As well, there are research programs that monitor certain industries and contaminants, such as pollution from the oilsands. SEE PESTICIDE RESIDUES, PAGE 4

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FERTILIZER

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Rising nitrogen prices expected to stall

FEBRUARY 23, 2017 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Box 2500, Stn. Main, Saskatoon, SK. S7K 2C4

As other countries produce more urea, global prices may begin to falter later in the year BY SEAN PRATT SASKATOON NEWSROOM

Wholesale nitrogen fertilizer prices that have been on the rise since the summer of 2016 will stay firm for the first half of 2017 and then slump, according to two major manufacturers of the product. Prices have been climbing because of escalating coal costs, which have significantly curtailed

Chinese urea production and exports. “In the last few months this has had a strong, positive impact on global urea pricing, outweighing the negative effect of increased capacity elsewhere,” Yara chief executive officer Svein Tore Holsether told analysts during a presentation of the company’s fourth quarter results. However, he said the positive

price momentum could eventually be derailed by capacity additions outside the Chinese market. Countries such as the United States, Algeria and Iran are adding an estimated eight million tonnes of urea production capacity this year. That is a lot of extra capacity, considering urea consumption typically grows at a pace of three million tonnes per year. “There is a risk that this incre-

mental capacity may weigh on global urea prices later this year,” said Holsether. T h e c a p a c i t y a d d i t i o n s a re expected to peak in 2017 and then fall to 5.3 million tonnes in 2018, 5.7 million tonnes in 2019 and 3.8 million tonnes in 2020, which are all still in excess of the usual annual increase in consumption. SEE STALLED PRICES, PAGE 5

PUTTING YOU IN CONTROL WITH LIQUID MUSCLE.

DuPont™ Travallas™ liquid herbicide delivers high-performance control on your toughest broadleaf weeds in spring wheat, durum wheat and spring barley. Questions? Ask your retailer, call 1-800-667-3925 or visit travallas.dupont.ca As with all crop protection products, read and follow label instructions carefully. Member of CropLife Canada. Unless indicated, trademarks with ®, ™ or SM are trademarks of DuPont or affiliates. © 2017 DuPont.

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The Western Producer is published in Saskatoon by Western Producer Publications, which is owned by GVIC Communications Corp. Publisher: Shaun Jessome Publications Mail Agreement No. 40069240

BY ROBERT ARNASON BRANDON BUREAU


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