APVMA approves late application of glyphosate on feed and food grade barley crops
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The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) has approved an application for grain growers to use glyphosate late on their feed or food grade barley crops, despite concern about trade implications from some sections of the grain and livestock industries.
The ruling means farmers are able to legally apply one treatment of glyphosate on barley crops to treat grass weeds and regrowth.
Farmers must then wait seven days before harvesting or grazing the sprayed crop.
Grain Producers Australia chairman Andrew Weidemann said his group had been working on the application for about 12 months, and he was pleased to see its approval.
"We've been working with the regulator on this for some time and we had to go through an approval process to achieve that," he said.
Mr Weidemann said the regulator's approval was well timed for some growers.
"Particularly for this year when growers right across Australia have been faced with some unseasonable weather patterns in various areas, they've had extended weed growth in crops," he said.
"And in a lot of cases lodged barley crops because of the larger barley crops that have been out there, so they're looking at how they can manage the regrowth that has been occurring in those paddocks at a reasonable cost.
"Someone said to me this morning that it would be at least probably a $30 per hectare win for growers, faced with not having to potentially windrow crops to try and achieve the same outcome as they would through usage of glyphosate.
"With barley, it's probably one of the last crops left that hasn't got a full registration actually in place for late-in-season crop work."
China not looking to buy feed grains
Mr Weidemann acknowledged concerns about the implications of the decision for the Chinese market.
"There's always market risks in anything we do. At the moment the pressure from China is purely around supply and demand," he said.
"At the moment China is not looking to buy feed grains. They've got an internal policy to essentially use its own feed grains.
"I've had malting barley buyers from China on my farm only last week looking to purchase up to a million tonnes of malting barley out of Australia this year, so I don't see there being any major impacts.
"Up to now they've been aware of the different usage patterns right across the world."
Mr Weidemann said it would not stop the practice of blending post-farm-gate lesser quality barley with malt grade barley and selling it as malt.
"They will I think be looking for more declarations. Maybe they'll provide site declarations and further segregations for growers," he said.
"It's really up to the trade to probably identify that, and I think that is where they have the opportunity, then growers should see price advantages in other areas.
"I think the lid has certainly been ripped right off the top of the practices that the trade is undertaking of the blending of grain post farm gate."
Topics: rural, agribusiness, agricultural-crops, grain, weeds, perth-6000
