CropLife worries about Environment Canada ‘over-reach’

Jun 28, 2023

It didn’t get a lot of press, but last fall the federal government took a stand to support Canada’s agriculture industry.

In December, the United Nations held a biodiversity conference in Montreal. The participants signed an agreement, called the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework, to protect nature and reverse biodiversity loss.

Leading up to the final agreement, some countries were pushing for a 50 per cent reduction in pesticide use worldwide.

But Canada said “no.”

“To Canada’s credit, including our environment minister, standing up and saying that arbitrary use-reduction targets for pesticides is not the way to go — that (it) would impact productivity,” said Pierre Petelle, president and chief executive officer of CropLife Canada, which represents the crop protection and plant breeding industry.

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Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.