Pesticides are killing people. Farmers are polluting rivers with fertilizer runoff. Irrigating crops is wasting freshwater. Genetically modified organisms are bad for humans and the planet.

These are just some of the misconceptions, misinformation and disinformation circulating widely on various social media platforms, panelists said during a webinar presented by the Simpson Centre for Food and Agricultural Policy, in the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

“We [farmers] are severely misunderstood by not only the public but certainly by our politicians as well,” said Nevin Rosaasen (photo at right) sustainability and government relations lead at Alberta Pulse Growers and a fourth-generation farmer.

“It’s important to get ag policy right,” he said. “Once ag policy is set, it’s really hard to make changes to it or to reverse things that have been put in place.”

The agriculture and agri-food sector accounts for one in nine jobs and employed 2.3 million people in 2023, according to data from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The sector generated $150 billion or about seven percent of Canada’s GDP.

The sector exports commodities and products to the U.S. (a concern given President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs), China, Mexico, Indonesia and India, Rosaasen said.

“We’re a vey exposed industry in that when we do have trade spats, it can directly impact the prices that broad-acre crop farmers receive,” he said.

Yet when it comes to wielding political influence, farmers as a group make up less than two percent of Canadian voters, he noted.

Still, studies show that farmers are the most trusted stakeholders throughout Canada’s food system, even more trusted in the system than nurses, doctors and academics.

At the same time, surveys by the Mississauga, Ont.-based Canadian Centre for Food Integrity have found that 91 percent of Canadians know little or nothing about modern farming practices.

Most Canadians don’t realize how much farming has changed compared with three generations ago and how farmers are deploying an array of new technologies to make farming more sustainable and productive, Rosaasen said.

 “We have an agrarian view that farmers are out there with the red barn [and] are there only to produce food,” he added. But modern farming “isn’t your typical great-grandfather’s approach to growing good.”

“We’re not just farming to grow food. We’re being pressured to address issues of climate change, issues of biodiversity, issues of preservation of wildlife and certain species at risk as well as water quality.”

The misconceptions, misinformation, disinformation and myths about agriculture circulating in society can include misinformation, or actual false statements or distortions (such as something quoted out of context), said Grace Skogstad (photo at right) professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto.

But such communication can also include disinformation, or a deliberate intention to deceive or cause harm, she said.

She pointed to the recent controversy over the federal government’s target to reduce fertilizer emissions on farms, which was translated by certain people to mean a reduction in farmers’ fertilizer use rather than reducing emissions from these fertilizers.

Skogstad pointed out that research shows people who hold false or conspiratorial beliefs about one issue tend to also hold such false beliefs and conspiracy theories about other issues. “It does erode trust in institutions and in [scientific] evidence and it does fuel political polarization.”

In the agricultural sector, she said, “misinformation about climate change also undermines people’s confidence in the scientific consensus around climate change, and then it reduces people’s acceptance of the science.”

Skogstad pointed to work by Ataharul Chowdhury, associate professor at the University of Guelph, who has proposed an analytical framework for understanding misinformation and disinformation on social media about the agri-food sector.

While government policy should be based on scientific evidence, science can be uncertain and ambiguous and the science itself can change, Skogstad said.

For example, the science behind the perspective that drinking red wine was good for heart health has recently shifted to a view that no amount of alcohol is entirely without health risk.

In a historical example, Canada and the U.S. in the early 1990s both had to decide how to assess the risks of a new product, recombinant bovine growth hormone, meant for dairy cows.

Health Canada determined the hormone was linked to an increase in mastitis (inflammation of udders) in the cows, so the department deemed the hormone not to be safe and it wasn’t allowed on the Canadian market. American regulators, however, made a different judgment and allowed the product on the U.S. market.

“Even scientists can disagree about the validity and reliability of the information and come to different conclusions about how to regulate the risk,” Skogstad said.

“Scientific information can be an antidote to misinformation,” she said. “But if it’s going to be, it has to be trusted.”

Regulating for the safety of pesticides

Rosaasen said he sees claims all the time on social media that pesticides used by farmers are killing people.

Pesticides used in Canada are regulated by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency, he said. “This agency is among the most highly regarded regulators in the world.”

All the pesticides farmers use – as well as herbicides and fungicides – are reevaluated every 15 years. If a pesticide is banned in another OECD country or within the European Union, it triggers a special re-evaluation in Canada.

Whenever farmers deliver grain, oilseeds or other commodities to an elevator or a food processor that is exporting, these crops are tested for export for residues of pesticides – residues measured in the parts per billion, Rosaasen said.

One part per billion is roughly one grain of salt in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or one second in 32,000 years, he noted.

For many crops, if farmers exceed only one part per billion they are unable to export that product or shipment.

Germany, for example, in 2016 reported finding traces of the herbicide glyphosate in beer. Upon investigation, the German regulator and the European Food Safety Authority found that if a person were to drink 1,000 litres of beer a day, they may be at risk of being impacted by glyphosate.

“But I’m sure you’ll have other health problems well before that glyphosate has any impact or risk to your human health,” Rosaasen said.

Farmers have started using “pulse with modulation” technology, which enables them as they’re working in the field to change the amount of herbicide being applied, based on soil composition and the weeds actually present in the field. The technology also avoids repeated herbicide application on overlapping areas.

“This has allowed farmers to cut their applications of herbicides down to less than 15 percent of what they would have otherwise used,” Rosaasen said.

Farmers also use a precision tilling tool that recognizes a weed and immediately digs it out, rather than tilling the entire field. This no-till approach increases soil health and helps sequester carbon in the soil.

Drones and robots with lasers are now being used to destroy individual weeds. “I think within 10 years we’re going to see swarms of solar-powered droids and geo-referenced weeds (individual weeds located in the field through geographic information systems),” Rosaasen said.

Another misconception or piece of misinformation is that farmers are loading waterways with nutrients from fertilizer runoff, he said, adding: “That is not true.”

Farmers regularly do soil testing and often plant tissue testing to ensure they’re applying the correct amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium or other micronutrients needed by specific crops.

Some farmers also use split, or differently timed, applications of fertilizers so that nutrients are applied when plants can most effectively uptake them.

“I can assure you that farmers do not overapply nutrients,” Rosaasen said. With inflation, the cost of farming inputs is so high, “we don’t have the money to throw nutrients out willy-nilly and hope for rain.”

Alberta Pulse Growers conducted a project in Alberta for three years that took more than 570 water samples in 21 wetlands.

While certain pesticides were detected, there was not a single exceedance above the Pest Management Regulatory Agency’s level for protecting aquatic life, Rosaasen said. “At no time did we see any concentrations that pose any risk to aquatic invertebrates, plants or other species that we are meant to protect.”

“Farmers are being good stewards of the land and they are protecting our water and sensitive habitats,” he said.

Assessing the risks of genetically modified foods

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) used in agri-foods also elicit a lot of misinformation and disinformation on social media outlets.

 “GMOs is just a new way to talk about plant breeding,” which has been happening for millennia, Rosaasen said.

Mutagenesis, in which mutagenic compounds are used in combining random plant mutations, is still deployed and allowed in organic agriculture, he noted. This technique enables the selection of plant varieties for certain genes or expressions of genes that provide crop-growing advantages, such as higher yields, disease resistance, stress tolerance and other traits.

GMOs, in which more precise genetic engineering techniques are used, “are a lot more accurate even when it comes to turning on a gene or having a certain gene expressed,” Rosaasen said.

mRNA and CRISPR – the gene-editing technologies that enabled the rapid production of vaccines against COVID-19 – are the same technologies used to produce GMOs in agriculture, he said. “Except we do not have consumer acceptance yet in a lot of places.”

However, all of the insulin used today to treat diabetes is a genetically modified organism. A lot of the yeasts used to make wine and cheese are also genetically modified.

Rather than GMOs being a risk to human health, the opposition to GMOs is a large risk to farming and acceptance of plant breeding, Rosaasen said.

The European Union uses the “precautionary principle” of being very risk-averse in evaluating the potential risk at an early stage of novel foods and products. EU regulations require mandatory labelling and tracking of GMO foods and bans synthetic beef growth hormones.

Repeated surveys have shown that Canadians want genetically modified foods to be labelled, but Canada has only a voluntary labelling policy, Skogstad said. “If industry wants more sale of GM foods, it would be much, much better that they label them.”

Is irrigating crops a waste of water?

Another misconception in agriculture is that irrigating crops is a waste of freshwater resources.

More than 70 percent of the total amount of irrigation across Canada happens in Alberta, said Margo Jarvis Redelback (photo at left), executive director of the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association, which includes 11 irrigation districts in the province.

The irrigation districts use nearly 2 billion cubic metres of water annually, the largest water use in Alberta, according to Alberta government data.

About 80 percent of irrigation in Alberta – amounting to about 1.5 million irrigated acres – occurs in southern Alberta, said Redelback, a fourth-generation farmer who uses irrigation.

That irrigated land represents only 4.4 percent of Alberta’s land base, but it produces 27 percent of the province’s primary agricultural sales, she noted. “It really shows the significance of the benefit of irrigation.”

Irrigation allows the producer to choose from more crop varieties, including many high-value crops that contribute more revenue compared with crops grown through dryland farming.

Based on a recent economic analysis by the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association, irrigated crop production and livestock production generate eight times more revenue per hectare for the producer than dryland farms, Redelback said.

At the same time, over-irrigating by the producer doesn’t maximize yield and quantity, nor does it promote good soil health, she said. “So our irrigators are really looking at optimizing the amount of moisture provided to the soil profile and ultimately the crop so that they can maximize their yield and quality.”

Data collected by the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association shows that long-term average use amounts to only about 60 percent of the total combined water allocation licenses across all 11 districts, Redelback said.

Moreover, this long-term average water use continues to decline thanks to irrigation technology upgrades and new technologies.

For example, about 61 percent of the irrigation districts’ water delivery is now done via buried pipelines rather than open canals – reducing seepage and evaporation.

In Alberta, more irrigators have switched to efficient low-pressure two-pivot irrigation systems, now used on 85 percent of the irrigated land in the 11 districts.

However, more advanced technology is expensive and not all irrigators may be able to afford it, Redelback noted. “That’s really important for policymakers to understand and when they are developing policy to give some recognition to the fact that all agricultural producers have different financial plans and different abilities to implement any innovative technologies.”

For example, Rosaasen said an advanced herbicide sprayer with “green-on-brown” technology that can differentiate a weed from the soil and spray herbicide only on that weed costs about $250,000.

Nevertheless, he pointed out that some of the most effective technologies adopted on broad-acre crop farms have been global positioning systems and auto-steering on equipment. These advances have reduced operator fatigue and resulted in huge savings on fuel for farmers.

Strengthening farmers’ role in policymaking

With Canadian farmers representing only two percent of the voting population in Canada, the panelists were asked what strategies farmers should adopt to be more represented in policymaking.

Skogstad said although farmers are well organized, her concern about farm lobby groups is essentially that they’re over-organized. There are numerous international, national and provincial groups representing the many aspects of farming, she said.

“The farm organizations don’t all speak with one voice,” Skogstad said. “It’s really hard for governments to know who to speak to when there is no single organization that speaks for farmers.”

“It would be ideal for the farmers themselves if they actually had a better way of organizing under one umbrella,” she added.

In Quebec, for example, the UPA (Union des producteurs agricoles) is very well organized and has a lot of influence on the Quebec government, Skogstad said.

Rosaasen agreed that having so many organizations speaking for farmers “gets to be very messy. But sometimes farmers aren’t in line with the elevator associations or the food processors. So we don’t always have a unified voice.”

 Skogstad said another concern is what she sees as the growing urban-rural divide in Canada, which she noted is replicated in the federal political party system. “It’s very unfortunate. It seems this urban-rural divide is also a divide around values as well.”

 Part of the problem is the nature of Canada’s federation, in which provinces have a lot of power, “and it can sometimes be in their interest to promote the interest of their province rather than the national interest,” she said.

“To the extent that rural areas tend to be over-represented in provincial elections, it also feeds into that urban-rural divide,” Skogstad said.

Rosaasen said when it comes to policymaking, it is not policymakers’ responsibility to communicate the current practices of modern agriculture.

However, he added, “It’s certainly their responsibility to understand how food is being produced, what new technologies are being used [and] how water is allocated.”

“For policymakers, it’s important that you get out to a farm, you see how things are done, you talk to farmers [and] you engage with them.”

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