Canola Council apologizes for tweet
The Canola Council of Canada offered an apology to farmers after an online plug for a research initiative spiralled into misunderstanding, outrage and threats from farmers to tear up memberships and cease paying levies.
In other words, it all started with a tweet.
The Canola Council of Canada was celebrating ongoing research on how beneficial insects like pollinators could hold economic value for canola farmers.
The project is part of the Canola Agronomic Research Program and is led by professor Paul Galpern at the University of Calgary, a leading ecologist whose research aims to find “win-win” scenarios for conservationists and farmers. The four-year project began in 2016 and entered its second phase in 2019. It’s valued at $313,200, with funding for the second phase provided by growers associations in Alberta and Manitoba.
Wetlands protection group Ducks Unlimited provided in-kind support of $20,000, mostly in the form of biological samples.
But the tweet’s imprecise wording led some farmers to believe their funding dollars were going to support the conservation group, sparking outrage among Saskatchewan farmers who say they’ve had “bad experiences” with Ducks Unlimited.
Fallout was massive and immediate, with many canola farmers threatening to terminate their membership and stop paying fees to the regional growers association who indirectly fund the council.
“They’re just 100-per-cent against the farmers when it comes to managing their land,” Blake Duchek said.
Duchek, who farms roughly 9,000 acres near Atwater, Sask., said Ducks Unlimited hurts farmers’ bottom lines by acquiring the best prospective farmland for conservation. He and other farmers are also often frustrated by rules around which wetlands on their properties can be drained or cleared. While such rules are set by the province, they see the advocacy group as incarnating those protections, measures that ultimately limit production, Duchek said.
“As a farmer I’m not against preserving habitats. But on our farm, probably 20 per cent of our acres are non-arable, and that’s because of wetlands that just cannot be drained ... it’s not like farmers are draining creeks or 10-acre areas.”
Scott Stephens, Ducks Unlimited’s director of regional operations for the Prairies, said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the reaction, especially given the non-profit’s relatively small role in the funding. He said the organization wants to work with farmers by providing them with subsidies for habitat preservation though he did acknowledge they can sometimes clash.
“For better or worse, we are the face of many of these conversations,” Stephens said.
The blowback was bad enough that Saskcanola, whose members produce roughly half the nation’s crop, said it would ask the council to put a hold on the project.
Council president Jim Everson said it’s not uncommon for the group to support research like this, adding that “Canola’s success is based on innovation.”
However, he apologized for its wording, which he conceded was “not very clear.”
“We’re going back to our funders at this stage to address concerns and find next steps,” he said.
Saskcanola director Gerry Hertz, who operates a farm in Edenwold, said many farmers have “frustrations” with the conservation group, noting the tweet unintentionally revealed great tensions around the politics of land use in the province.
He said the backlash is also due to other reasons. Many farmers are still feeling the impact of one of the worst harvests in years; some still have not harvested their crops. And all of them are concerned by China’s ongoing suspension of two of Canada’s biggest canola export firms, which has devalued remaining crops and cut growers off from their biggest market.
“Farmers are on a short fuse these days,” Hertz said.
“When you’ve had a frustration with an entity and you find there’s a relationship there and you don’t know exactly what it is, you read between the lines.”
Duchek said he still has doubts about whether the research is important. He said restoring trade with China ought to be the council’s No. 1 priority.
Everson said it is.
Stephens said the incident shows more has to be done to communicate the environmental and economic importance of preserving wetlands and to improve ongoing collaboration with farmers.
“It highlights for me the importance of these conversations,” Stephens said.