THE consumer’s growing desire for healthy produce could lead to glyphosate-treated grain being pushed out of the market, regardless of regulation surrounding the widely-used chemical.
That’s according the Grain Industry Association of Western Australia (GIWA) oat council chairman and Narrogin grower Ashley Wiese, who recently returned from the 2018 American Oat Workers Conference in Seattle, Washington, United States and spoke at last week’s GIWA Oat Spring Forum at Narrogin.
Glyphosate – the key active ingredient in Monsanto’s popular weed killer Roundup – has made headlines in recent months, following its temporary suspension in Brazil and a landmark court case in America which saw a terminally-ill groundskeeper successfully sue Monsanto after claiming glyphosate caused his cancer.
Despite a reversal of the glyphosate ban in Brazil and strong backing of the broad-spectrum weed killer by world health authorities and the international agricultural community, Mr Wiese said consumers were hyper-aware of the negativity surrounding its use.
He said regardless of the legislation relating to the application of glyphosate on grain crops, the growing trend towards ‘clean, green’ health food products meant more consumers did not want traces of any chemical evident in their food.
“There’s definitely a lot of discussion about organics and I think a lot of it comes from this glyphosate issue,” Mr Wiese said.
“When you’ve got consumers worried about what they’re eating and they’re eating health food bars for example, they’re not going to want glyphosate on that product, so you see producers demanding chemical-free grain and ultimately, organic grain.
“The message I came away with was that the customer doesn’t want glyphosate on their oats; it’s not industry telling us what to do or not, it’s about us trying to put ourselves in a position where we can attract a premium for our grain going forward.”
Mr Wiese said the ability for Australian growers to sun dry their grain crops in preparation for harvest placed them in a favourable position against many of their American and Canadian counterparts, who were forced to desiccate oat crops using chemicals such as glyphosate due to climatic conditions.
He said the chemical was much more heavily relied upon in North American farming systems, which resulted in high detections of the chemical in food products.
This was evident in data from a recent test of 43 oat-based breakfast cereals, where detections of more than five times the glyphosate maximum residue limit (MRL) was measured on some products.
“Whether you think glyphosate is safe or not, the reality is there’s a lot more glyphosate getting on finished products and customers are taking notice of that and don’t like it,” Mr Wiese said.
“I think we (WA growers) are in a great position – we have clean oats.”
Australia is the world’s third largest oat growing country, producing between 1.1 million tonnes and 2.1mt per year over the past five years.
Of that, WA accounts for about 36 per cent of the national oat crop and is this year tipped to produce 439,000t, according to GIWA.
Mr Wiese said the WA oat industry had potential to continue to grow off the back of the cereal’s high nutritional value and renowned health benefits such as its cholesterol-lowering capabilities.
He said companies such as Sweden’s Oatly – which produced a range of products including oat-based milk, yoghurt and ice-cream – were leading the way when it came to appealing to the world’s health food markets and breeders were taking notice of the trend.
Mr Wiese said breeders at the American event discussed redirecting breeding programs to focus on improving health-related traits within the grain to further appeal to high-end, health conscious markets.
“One thing I noticed at the conference was that there was a lot of talk about breeding for health, not just disease and agronomic traits,” Mr Wiese said.
“Our breeders are well on top of this and we’re trying to work out in the next six months how we take oats forward.”