Viewpoints THE SCOPE OF the Accredited Seed Treatment Operation Standards is about to expand. All commercial seed treatment operations, including those treating cereal and pulses, must successfully complete an audit of the standards by Dec. 31, 2020. Non-compliance will be enforced by an industry no-ship policy effective Jan. 1, 2021. Alberta Seed Guide spoke with Russel Hurst, CropLife Canada’s vice-president of sustainability and stewardship, about the journey ahead on the road to standards compliance and the effect implementation will have on industry stakeholders. ASG: What has the journey been like so far toward implementing the Accredited Seed Treatment Operation Standards? RH: The whole process has been a unique journey. One of the program’s early drivers was to address environmental, health and safety protocols within the seed treatment sector. We viewed seed treatment, which was a rapidly expanding component within the pesticide sector, as a gap in our suite of lifecycle stewardship programs. This is a vibrant seed industry. If we have robust environmental, health and safety standards, we can stay away from onerous provincial and federal government regulations: in an ideal world, we can communicate that national standard to provincial ministries of agriculture and the environment and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency at the federal level. The process may be led by CropLife, but we do a lot of briefings and consultations with seed growers, seed cleaning co-ops and seed companies and their respective associations to make sure their wants, needs and desires are met. At the end of the day, maybe not everyone is happy 100 per cent of the time, but we’re looking to this process to answer how we continue to culture a vibrant seed sector. Generally speaking, we’re fairly happy with how 2018 turned out. By July, 382 facilities across the which is the majority of operations that fit the scope of the current standards’ requirements such as corn, canola ans soybean seed treatment operation had successfully passed the audit. About three dozen facilities are in the process of finalizing their audits, however, they didn’t get certified for the 2018 seed treatment year. Typically, those were facilities that weren’t treating corn, canola or soybeans, but have aspirations of doing so. The largest number of certified facilities is in Manitoba, primarily because that’s where a high number of seed growers Russel Hurst discusses the next phase of the Accredited Seed Treatment Operation Standards implementation and how it will benefit farmers and the seed industry as a whole. BLAZING A TRAIL are located and it’s where the soybean business has expanded significantly over the last couple of years. It is expected the will trend upwards in Saskatchewan and Alberta over time. Any new facility coming online that wants to treat seed commercially — soybeans, canola, and to a lesser extent corn — in Western Canada, will have to complete an audit. ASG: What are your observations from the first year of program implementation? RH: In terms of the lessons we’ve learned from the audit process to date, we’ve had a very low level of compliance and enforcement issues. Individuals who did try to purchase 38 www.seed.ab.ca | Advancing Seed in Alberta