Sugarcane farmers question APVMA paraquat ban

Cane growers say a decision by the chemical regulator to ban them using controversial herbicide paraquat could lead to worse outcomes for the environment while they search for an alternative. 

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) released its review of paraquat and diquat in June, which significantly reduced the application rates allowed in most broadacre crops. 

But sugarcane growers were given two years to phase out its use completely before the chemical would no longer be registered for use on their crop.

The APVMA said the review assessed each paraquat use pattern separately against current environmental safety standards and found an unacceptable risk to birds foraging in cane growing areas.

But Canegrowers chief executive Dan Galligan said growers feared the move could lead to worse environmental outcomes than those the regulator was trying to prevent.  

"The lack of alternatives means there's a lot of stress and concern," he said.

"What it means is usually changing farming systems to something that's more expensive or sometimes even worse in terms of environmental outcomes."

Bird health concerns

Paraquat is used early in the planting of the crop because it kills weeds quickly but does not linger in the soil, allowing the young cane to get established. 

Mr Galligan said Sugar Research Australia was looking at suitable alternatives, but there was no timeline on when that would be delivered. 

In the interim, he said changes to the farming system to achieve the same results would be "dramatic".

"Effectively, we're going to have to use more herbicides and possibly increase our sediment loss on farms, which is not really what we want to try and do," he said. 

The APVMA acknowledged growers may need to change weed management practices, but said alternatives and the economic impacts of those changes were matters for growers, advisers, industry and state governments to manage. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for the regulator said the use pattern in sugarcane posed acute and chronic exposure risks to birds foraging in treated areas.

"The supported sugarcane use patterns did not meet the required environmental safety standards,"

it said.

"Therefore [those use patterns] were not retained on approved labels," a spokesperson for the regulator said.

But growers in Far North Queensland dispute the conclusion. 

Tully farmer Bryce MacDonald said the APVMA's decision was "bizarre".

"I've never seen any bird die from paraquat,"

he said.

"In fact, I reckon there's more birds around than there ever was, and some other people have voiced that to me as well."

Nearby sugarcane and banana farmer Adrian Crema said growers did not understand why the risks could not be managed. 

"I personally have never seen a dead bird as a result of spraying paraquat in a cane paddock," he said.

Growers using paraquat are able to adopt a minimal till farming system, which means they disturb the soil less and reduce run-off to the Great Barrier Reef. 

"How are we going to grow sugarcane without paraquat?" Mr Crema said.

"Do they want us to go back to cultivating … to use more heavy residual chemicals which are more toxic to fish?

"There are a lot of confused cane farmers out there right now who want answers."

Approved uses

Paraquat has previously been linked to an increased risk of Parkinson's disease, although the APVMA's review found the evidence did not support a link between exposure through approved uses and the disease.

Australia's peak body for Parkinson's disease disputes that finding.

Under the new restrictions, sugarcane farmers are still able to use paraquat on farm for fallow crops, headlands and fire breaks in the same paddock, but not on the sugarcane crop itself.

Mr MacDonald said that only added to the confusion and farmers should be trusted to use the product by the label.

"Farmers don't waste money. They don't waste chemicals. They use them conservatively," he said. 

The APVMA said it did not assess crops based solely on where they were grown, and therefore different crops could receive different regulatory outcomes even when they were grown in similar regions.