The National Farmers Union in New Brunswick supports having a discussion on the complex issue of spraying of glyphosate.
Board member Pierre-Olivier its use is a symptom of the industrial agricultural model.
“Also commodity production, related to food not being a common right for all New Brunswickers but is now a commodity sold through the international market,” he says.
Brassard says the difference between the aerial spraying of forests and agricultural uses are not comparable.
“It’s basically the structure of power. What we have right now is a big multinational, transnational corporation who is using glyphosate to basically produce at the lowest cost a commodity, so wood, to sell at the international level,” he says.
Brassard says he believes there are ways around the use of the pesticide in agriculture but that the sector needs support during that transition.
The union believes that for the future of food production in New Brunswick, we need to invest in agroecology.
Brassard says there is a variety of techniques that work with nature and raw materials from the local environment in which we need to invest.
He says farmers should not have to bear the brunt of this societal change, but are an integral part of social transformation and should be treated as such.
“If we want to have a transition in relation to glyphosate we need an amount of time and support for farmers. That could be financial support or governmental support,” says Brassard.
He hopes talks about this transition will include all the players, such as a roundtable discussion with the farmers, processors, citizens and governments.
