AgroPages-Nufarm, grains group at odds with Australia's biggest exporter over glyphosate-Agricultural news

By Brad Thompson

Nufarm and Grain Producers Australia have put themselves on a collision course with the nation's biggest grains exporter after backing the use of glyphosate on maturing barley crops.

GPA, supported by the ASX-listed herbicide maker, will push for the national regulator to grant full-blown approval before a temporary permit setting limits on the practice expires next year.

This is despite CBH, Australia's biggest co-operative with thousands of farmer members, putting a self-imposed ban on shipments to China of barley treated with glyphosate before harvest.

CBH took the step because it feared the growing presence of glyphosate residues in feed barley, intended to sustain livestock but commonly used to make beer in China, was a serious threat to booming exports worth billions of dollars in recent years.

China and other countries that do not have official maximum residue levels (MRLs) on barley imports are covered by the CBH blanket ban.

The issue is unrelated to China taking anti-dumping action against Australia in a move that threatens to derail barley exports, but highlights CBH's resolve to protect market access in the face of a global backlash against glyphosate use.

Residue testing shows a big jump in the presence of glyphosate in barley samples with some farmers using the weedkiller to speed up the even ripening of the crop, something known as desiccating or crop topping.

International standards

Nufarm said it supported the pre-harvest use of glyphosate for desiccation in feed barley, a practice widely registered overseas and employed by farmers in North America and Europe.

The company said the practice complied with Australian chemical and food safety standards and those of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex), the international food standards body recognised by world trade agreements.

"A few international markets, including China, have unfortunately not kept up to date with these widely accepted international standards," a Nufarm spokesman said.

"This practice [desiccating] delivers considerable benefit to both the grower and consumer. Along with acting as a harvest aid, it also controls undesirable weeds, including ryegrass which can spread the grain contaminant ergot, and prevents viable weed seeds setting for the following season."

Nufarm said the use of glyphosate as a ripening aid allowed farmers to harvest in a timely manner and reduced the risk of crops being wiped out or hit by early summer storms.

The Nufarm share price, along with those of other global crop protection companies, fell sharply in August after a Brazilian judge temporarily suspended glyphosate use and a court in San Francisco awarded $US289 million ($398.5 million) to a school groundsman who said the weedkiller caused his terminal cancer.

Call for permanent approval

GPA chairman Andrew Weidemann said the federal government should lobby Beijing to become a Codex signatory, but conceded this was difficult given Australia is not a signatory.

Mr Weidemann said GPA and Nufarm had taken the right course in pushing the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to issue a permit allowing glyphosate desiccating in 2016.

"It is important that we have label recognition for product use and that is why GPA took the step when it did to make sure that we had a maximum residue level and that we had the ability to use glyphosate on barley like every other country around the world was able to do," he said.

Mr Weidemann said the APVMA should grant permanent approval, with appropriate controls and maximum residue levels.

"It is a registered practice globally and Australian farmers want to have that same ability as the people they are competing against," he said.

GPA said the market should be allowed to decide whether it wanted barley treated with glyphosate before harvest now that CBH, based in export-focused Western Australia, had decided to segregate it from other barley.

WA barley grower Mike Lamond said the industry was worried about the market access consequences of desiccating given the high degree of negativity about glyphosate among consumers.

Mr Lamond said the minor benefits of the practice also had to be weighed against the build up of glyphosate resistance in weeds. He said there were alternatives that could achieve the same result.