The Canadian market presents tremendous opportunities for Florida growers, but it’s also rife with pitfalls, as attendees of recent town hall meetings discovered.

To offer solutions, FFVA conducted the meeting series “Navigating the Canadian Marketplace” throughout the state. Joint sponsors were the Canadian Produce Marketing Association and the Dispute Resolution Corp.

Florida exported $736 million in agricultural goods to Canada in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the Canadian government. Exports of live, fresh, or chilled crop products totaled $333.4 million. Fresh tomatoes are a leading export crop, accounting for about 10% of Florida’s production every year. Three out of every four dollars spent in Canada on fresh produce are on imports, yet Florida products represent only a fraction (about 6% in 2008) of all of Canada’s fresh produce imports. That indicates the untapped opportunities for Florida producers.

Handling Hurdles

Despite the prospects of the Canadian market, there also are numerous challenges and a lot of potential for “gotchas,” says Mike Aerts, FFVA’s director of membership and marketing.

Perhaps one of the biggest potential pain points for companies wanting to sell in Canada is the country’s decision to change its allowed maximum residue levels (known as tolerances in the U.S.) for crop protection chemicals from an “inadvertent” or “default” tolerance of 0.1 part per million for residues of any material detected to a system that involves an affirmative list of maximum residue levels (MRLs) for produce, much like the system we operate under in the U.S. In addition, many of the materials used in the U.S. are not registered in Canada, so there may be many examples of chemical/commodity interactions where no MRL exists at all.

A Florida producer can follow to the letter the labels of every crop protection chemical material used on the farm. Yet the company’s trucks can be turned away at the border because a material either wasn’t registered in Canada or the MRL is too high. In fact, Aerts says, that’s happened repeatedly. So how can growers avoid having their products rejected as adulterated?

It’s no easy task, but FFVA and other industry groups are “doing everything we can on the front end of the curve to make sure there’s no trade disruption,” Aerts says. This potential trade irritant has become a priority for not just grower organizations but also for government officials on both sides of the borders, and registrants as well.

Digging In

An industry initiative is under way to identify and prioritize crop protection chemicals used by growers. Information is being gathered from Florida growers and compiled in an online database (www.uscanadagrowerprioritydatabase.com) that serves as a source for registrants and regulators alike to understand which materials are most important to growers.

The database is funded by a Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops grant from USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. It compares Canadian MRLs and U.S. tolerances so registrants and regulators can see exactly where to direct their efforts in getting those numbers to match.

Why is it important for registrants? U.S. growers who want to export won’t buy products that don’t have a corresponding MRL in Canada (or Japan, or the European Union, or Korea), so registrants are more likely to register or at least establish an MRL for their products there. The database also gives regulators valuable information in making decisions about which labels to review and in what order.

Global Reach

On a larger scale, the MRL harmonization issue has attracted the attention of the European Union and other countries, Aerts says. The topic was the focus of the 2007 Global Minor Use Summit in Rome; the differences in MRLs for specialty crops were discussed among the countries represented there. “Harmonization efforts are going forward,” Aerts says. “Countries are cooperating in reviews on chemicals. That’s a positive, because we need as much cooperation as possible.

“The world is small, and until we get this harmonization effort completed correctly, we have to make sure that before we ship commodities to other countries they are within legal specifications of the country where we’re shipping.”

Grower participation is key to making the harmonization effort succeed, however, Aerts says. FFVA still needs information from growers on priority crop protection tools so it can be added to the database. For example, the database doesn’t include any information on peppers, yet more than $45 million worth of peppers are shipped to Canada from Florida every year, he said. Aerts invites growers to contact FFVA by phone or eMail with any questions or to provide information on expanding or refining the database.