Manitoba-North Dakota

Mandak99@mb.sympatico.ca

At the 2002 Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmer’s Association (Mandak) Annual Meeting, the Mandak membership passed a resolution opposing the registration and introduction of Roundup-Ready Wheat until the marketing challenge and the agronomic and economic challenges of controlling volunteer Roundup-Ready crops have been solved.

For the past twenty-five years, the Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmer’s Association has been a leader in the promotion of reduced tillage systems in crop production. The past fifteen years have witnessed the adoption rates of reduced tillage systems increase exponentially, due in large part to the lowering of Roundup (Glyphosate) prices.

Reduced Tillage Systems replace the use of tillage equipment with a pre-seed or pre-emergent application of Roundup (Glyphosate) in controlling weeds. Roundup (Glyphosate) has been widely adopted since its registration in the early 1990s for pre-harvest control of perennial weeds, in both reduced tillage and traditional tillage systems.

The introduction of Roundup-Ready Canola has created new management challenges in the control of volunteer Roundup-Ready weeds. The potential introduction of another Roundup-Ready crop like wheat creates a possible environment whereby the control of volunteer weeds that are resistant to Roundup (Glyphosate) is either too complex, or too expensive. This situation may force producers to move back to traditional tillage, in pursuit of economical control methods for these volunteer weeds.

Mandak members’ concerns over the introduction of Roundup-Ready Wheat centre around two key issues. The first concern is that of marketing a GM wheat, given that cross-contamination with traditional wheat is likely to occur. Given the current environment in our traditional wheat markets worldwide, and the general resistance to GM crops, questions arise to the future of wheat production in Canada.

The second concern revolves around the agronomic and economic challenges of controlling volunteer Roundup-Ready weeds. At the present time there are no economical means of adding additional herbicide (for volunteer RR wheat) to the Roundup (Glyphosate) pre-seed application that is used in the reduced tillage cropping system.

The Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmer’s Association questions both the short and long term economic impact to Canadian Farmers if Roundup-Ready Wheat is introduced, before the above-mentioned concerns are fully addressed.