Why it matters: Sencor’s portfolio products add more crop protection solutions for Canadian growers.

Sencor products have been used for decades on tough broadleaf and grassy weeds across a wide range of crops, including pulses, potatoes and soybeans. With the new integration of Sencor products, Sipcam Agro will expand proven herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and biostimulants.

Sencor products are a Group 5 mode of action, making them an important tool to help growers manage weed resistance.

Sipcam will soon begin managing all sales, marketing and distribution activities for Sencor 75 DF and Sencor 480 F in Canada.

Sipcam is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. Since 2024, Sipcam Agro in Canada has focused on supplying crop protection products to Canadian farmers.

akienlen@fbcpublishing.com

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Avireo is a pre-seed/pre-emergent herbicide combining Group 27 and Group 14 active ingredients. FMC promotes it as the first product of its kind in Western Canada.

Avireo targets such broadleaf weeds like Group 2, 4 and 9 herbicide-resistant kochia, Group 2 and 4 herbicide-resistant cleavers, volunteer canola and others.

Barricade III is a post-emergent herbicide with a higher-than-normal rate of fluroxypyr for enhanced control of kochia and other troublesome broadleaf weeds.

Also claiming kochia control is PrecisionPac CF-18-878 Pro. FMC says the burnoff blend provides extended control of more than 50 broadleaf weed species, among them kochia, narrow-leaved hawk’s-beard, Russian thistle and volunteer canola. It features four modes of action when mixed with glyphosate.

Express FT is also marketed for kochia control and others like cleavers and dandelions.

The three other crop protection products on the company’s 2026 slate include:

• Avoda Pro seed treatment for protection of wheat, barley, oats and rye against seed and soil-borne diseases. Its three active ingredients are tebuconazole, prothioconazoleb and metalaxyl.
• Focus NXT herbicide — a preseed herbicide formulated with spring wheat growers in the black soil zone in mind.
• Optimize FXC DS — a soybean innoculant meant to help support early nodulation and crop establishment.

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The products are more effective, a dozen farmers across the Thessaly plain said. They are also potentially more harmful: laboratory tests shared with Reuters show the bottles contain pesticides banned in the European Union for several years because of suspected risks to humans or the environment.

The situation in Greece, explained by farmers, elected officials, law enforcement officers and pesticide industry experts, is echoed across the EU, where authorities say the use of banned and counterfeit pesticides is higher than ever.

This comes as the bloc is seeking to reduce even the use of permitted crop aids as part of its green transition.

At least 14 per cent of pesticides used on EU fields today are illegal, up from around 10 per cent in 2015, EU data shows. In some areas of Greece, that number hits 25 per cent, said Greece’s Crop Protection Association ESYF, which represents pesticide companies in the country.

A record 2,040 tonnes of illegal pesticides were seized by police in Europe in 2022, the latest available data by Europol from an EU-wide operation shows, four times higher than in 2019.

The problem is likely even larger because so much smuggling goes undetected, said authorities in Greece and in several of Europe’s main agricultural producers: France, Germany and Spain.

Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras told Reuters Greece was working to protect public health, support farmers, and promote safe, legal agricultural production.

“The fight against illegality is a priority for us,” he said.

The EU Commission did not respond to Reuters’ questions.

Farmers’ livelihoods threatened

Greek farmers are vulnerable to the illegal pesticide trade because of the lingering impacts of the 2010-18 financial crisis and climate change, which has parched their land and brought pest outbreaks.

Pesticides can amount to up to 50 per cent of annual costs, some farmers said. A litre of a popular Greek insecticide costs up to 380 euros (C$607.62). A counterfeit can be found on the black market for 200-230 euros, they added.

The high prices threaten livelihoods in Thessaly, a key breadbasket in central Greece, which produces apples, almonds, grains and cotton. Orchards in the region have been abandoned as farmers seek work elsewhere.

“To survive, a farmer must become a criminal?” said Giorgos Zeikos, a fourth-generation apple farmer who heads a cooperative in the village of Agia.

“It’s one thing to break the law to profit; it’s another to do it just to survive.”

Zeikos said he has refused offers to use illegal pesticides. But farmers in six villages across the hot valley said they, or their relatives or neighbors, had tried them.

Another temptation is the perceived effectiveness of the illegal pesticides.

On a break from the fields, farmers in the cotton-producing village of Metamorfosi recounted how older, now-banned pesticides were so potent that birds would not fly over their fields after they sprayed. Now, they said, they apply twice the recommended dose of the legal product.

George Pontikas, president of ESYF, the crop protection association, dismissed farmers’ claims that pesticides were expensive and inefficient. He said authorities were not doing enough to punish lawbreakers.

“Someone who poisons our food supply to make a profit should be treated as a felon,” said Pontikas, who is also chief executive of the Greek branch of Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta.

Illicit chemical trade

The products are smuggled into Greece overland from Bulgaria in spare tires or ferried on rafts traffickers use to bring migrants into Europe from Turkey, farmers and officials said.

In one village, an almond farmer said he once drove to Bulgaria and bought five boxes of counterfeit products for himself and his neighbours. In another, a farmer said locals act as intermediaries for a man known as “the Bulgarian”. When he is expected, they take orders from others in the village.

Farmers pay in cash, spray at night and burn the empty containers to erase all evidence, they said.

“If you want it, you’ll find it,” said Thanasis Kostis, a farmer in Metamorfosi. Kostis said he has not used illegal products.

Farmers who told Reuters they had used the illegal pesticides asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from authorities.

Bulgaria’s Food Safety Agency said it has stepped up inspections since October to combat the trade and use of unauthorized products.

Turkey’s Trade Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The trade is increasingly structured, resembling organized economic crime, a senior Greek police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Roles are divided into import, storage and distribution. Meanwhile, police act largely on tip-offs, three police and industry officials told Reuters.

Dimitris Stavridis, head of Thessaly’s General Directorate of Regional Agricultural Economy, acknowledged that more checks could be carried out in farmers’ markets but said that some regions struggled with understaffing.

Health risks

Seized products go to the Benaki Phytopathological Institute in Athens for analysis. Many arrive with Bulgarian, Turkish, or handwritten labels. Some counterfeits look like EU-approved products but may contain harmful substitutes, including unknown solvents. Under Greek law, only pesticides with Greek labels are legal.

Greek police and Europol say many of these substances originate in China.

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email it has always asked companies to abide by the laws in the countries in which they operate and that Beijing is willing to strengthen cooperation with the EU on customs enforcement.

The EU bans have been partly due to what regulators identified as health risks, including links to liver, kidney and lung damage, or as possible carcinogens. However, some of these chemicals are used legally in other countries, including the United States.

Over a dozen banned pesticides – some since 2009 – were detected in Greece alone in 2024, tests seen by Reuters show.

“This is serious,” said Thessaly Governor Dimitris Kouretas, a toxicology professor, referring to research on the possible health impact.

In the past year, 10 banned pesticides were detected in Greek produce including olives, cherries, tomatoes, grapes and oranges, Agriculture Ministry data shows.

While the World Health Organization says consumer risk from low pesticide levels is minimal, farmers using illegal chemicals may face greater danger.

In the early 2000s, respiratory physicians at Larissa University Hospital in Thessaly observed that many patients who smoked and were exposed to pesticides were developing a rare form of lung scarring. In 2006, their published findings alongside similar research in France, helped to formally recognize a disease now known as Combined Pulmonary Fibrosis and Emphysema (CPFE).

“Nearly all such patients exposed to both smoking and pesticides developed this distinct entity,” said doctor Ilias Dimeas.

Elsewhere in Greece’s farming regions, doctors say they have seen a rise in respiratory diseases in recent years potentially linked to pesticide exposure and are beginning to take note of their patients’ occupational history.

Farmers greet the risks with a shrug.

“All pesticides have consequences,” said Kostis, the farmer in Metamorfosi. “I had a mask, but this year I haven’t worn it at all.”

— Additional reporting by Alexandros Avramidis in Thessaly; Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt; Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris, Emma Pinedo in Madrid, Georgi Slavov in Sofia, Kate Abnett in Brussels, Joe Cash in Beijing and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara.

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Signs of these financial impacts are already emerging. Bayer shares fell sharply to a 20-year low on Tuesday, after the chemical company warned that weak global agricultural markets and a slumping U.S. farm economy are likely to pressure profits further.

Agrichemical competitors Syngenta, Corteva and the agriculture unit of Germany’s BASF could also face challenges in the sector, analysts said.

Nearly one-third of all the pesticides and fungicides that Paul Butler uses on his Illinois soybean and corn farm are generic to help him cut costs in a tight year, he said.

Fellow Illinois grain grower Jeff O’Connor is doing the same. “It’s like if you grew up eating Fruity Pebbles and now you go to Dollar General and get Fruity Bites,” he said.

Despite the cost savings, farmers say there can be drawbacks to downgrading. Manufacturers of generic chemicals typically do not cover the cost of respraying if the product does not work, said Caleb Hamer, an Iowa corn and soy farmer.

Still, Midwestern distributors and grain elevators say they have seen customers cutting back their spring pesticide and herbicide budgets.

Some farmers are shifting away from branded products, said Matt Carstens, chief executive of farm cooperative Landus and agricultural financing company Conduit. Others are investing in equipment that targets and treats weeds and pests in their fields – allowing them to buy less herbicides and pesticides altogether, he said.

“It comes down to this: What does the farmer really need? Do they need a name brand, with protection insurance and complaint policies backing it? Do they need to pay for all of that?” Carstens said.

Off-patent chemistry

When it comes to chemistry, a farmer’s buying decisions often are rooted in the seed.

Farmers typically base their chemical purchases with trait-specific seeds they want – such as ones that produce a drought-tolerant crop or can withstand herbicide applications that kill weeds without harming the plant.

If there is a generic option to brand-name herbicides, and the seeds that a farmer purchases can tolerate it, then it can makes sense to go with a less expensive product, said Mac Marshall, founder of agriculture advising firm Balcony View Consulting.

The number of generics available to farmers is growing. The patent for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and the world’s most widely used herbicide, expired in 2000, according to Rabobank agricultural analysts Owen Wagner and Sam Taylor.

More than two dozen active ingredient patents have expired in the past five years – spurring a boom in off-patent use, which now accounts for about 80 per cent of the agrichemical market share, they said.

Now, with farmers facing weak margins this spring, they’re more likely to look for cost savings among their fertilizer or crop protection chemicals, Taylor said.

— Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago

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Canada’s Pest Management Review Agency approved Garlon XRT herbicide, the first industrial vegetation product with drone application on the label.

“We are the first company to have a pesticide registered with PMRA for drone application,” said Mark Versluys, specialties business leader for Corteva Agriscience in Calgary.

“There is no other pesticide in Canada that has drone application on the label,” he said.

Versluys said the data collection and processing of the information required for approval took many months before the company received approval from PMRA.

Now, the herbicide can be sprayed by drone under utility right-of-ways, transmission lines, oil and gas leases and on steep mountainous terrain, anywhere Garlon was already registered for use in industrial areas. The approval does not extend to drone spraying for agricultural use.

Versluys said Corteva will continue to collect data and work with PMRA to have other pesticides registered for application by drone in the future.

“This isn’t just a one and done. This is the first step in a very exciting journey,” he said.

“I think the future looks very bright.”

Markus Weber, president of Landview Drones, said while the door is open a crack, PMRA needs to do more to add drone application registration for agricultural use to existing labels. Approving one herbicide at a time will take five to 10 years before there is a large selection of chemistry available for farmers.

Weber said ideally, he would hope PMRA would approve any chemical for drones that is now approved for aircraft.

“To me that is ultimately the way that we need to do this. It can’t just be label by label,” he said at the Agriculture in Motion farm show held northwest of Saskatoon.

In the first hour of the show, more than 120 farmers showed up for a drone demonstration.

“It is incredible. Farmers see this as a tool primarily for three things: brush control, pasture fungicide application and desiccant application.”

Pest control products can’t legally be sprayed by drone, but farmers see the potential, he said.

“Now that drones can fly large acreages and spraying can be done quickly and reliably, they see the potential, but they just can’t because the label doesn’t allow them to.”

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The company on Tuesday announced the release of Huskie PRE, a combination of pyrasulfotole (Group 27) and bromoxynil (Group 6), registered for pre-emergent application on barley, triticale and spring, winter and durum wheat fields.

“Tank mixes currently available are limited in their effectiveness against kochia resistant to both Group 2 and Group 9 herbicides,” Ashley Smith, Bayer’s crop protection marketing manager for Western Canada, said in a release.

Huskie PRE, she said, is a specially-designed and “extremely potent” broad-spectrum product for pre-burn only, to be added to Roundup before cereal crops.

It becomes the “first known product on market to control Group 2, 4, 5, 9 and 14-resistant kochia species in Western Canada.”

The pyrasulfotole molecule, she said, is best known as the active in Bayer’s Infinity, Infinity FX and Velocity.

Weed resistance issues such as kochia show that “in-crop application is not always enough,” the company said.”

“When we look at weed management, we want to control kochia in particular at the early stage; we want to get right up out of the ground for that critical weed-free period,” Smith said at Ag in Motion on Tuesday, adding the product will help take some of the stress and strain off in-crop application.

Huskie PRE is expected to be commercially available for the 2025 growing season, in 20-acre jugs, 320-acre drums and/or 1,000-acre totes, Bayer said.

More to come.

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“We are concerned as farmers about rules and regulations coming out of EPA when it comes to herbicides,” Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association (ASA), said during the general session of the 2024 Commodity Classic conference.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed a herbicide strategy designed to bring the agency’s registrations into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

Courts have consistently ruled that the EPA is not properly evaluating the impact pesticides have on endangered species, and the proposed strategy is the EPA’s attempt to address those concerns.

Gackle said the ASA has no problem with the EPA meeting its legal obligations, but the policy must be something that could be implemented on farms and that is not the case with the proposed strategy.

For example, the strategy calls for farmers to seek guidance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 30 days before applying a pesticide in areas where endangered species reside.

“We don’t know three days ahead of time what we need to be spraying in our fields,” Gackle said during an interview.

“Something like that just doesn’t work.”

A survey conducted by the ASA indicates 80 percent of producers would not comply with the EPA’s proposal and would face “moderate to extreme” costs to become compliant.

“The proposal would likely require billions of dollars for farmers across the country to implement and could prevent some farmers from using certain herbicides entirely,” the ASA said in a news release.

That is why soybean growers were relieved when the EPA announced it is extending the deadline to finalize the strategy by three months to Aug. 30, giving the agency more time to consider feedback from farm groups and others.

“They are taking our input, so that’s a hopeful sign,” said Gackle.

He also praised the agency for its quick action in the dicamba case.

Growers were blindsided by a federal district court in Arizona that vacated the 2020 registrations for a variety of dicamba products used on 50 million acres of U.S. corn and soybeans.

The ruling meant growers couldn’t use millions of dollars worth of product for the 2024 growing season and would have seriously jeopardized yields.

However, the EPA stepped in and ruled that growers can use existing stocks of the product that were packaged, labelled and shipped before the Feb. 6 court ruling.

“We feel like we stopped the bleeding there and saved a lot of families a lot of money,” EPA administrator Michael Regan told reporters during the Commodity Classic, a conference that drew a record 11,500 guests.

U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack praised his colleague.

“Every time I think I’ve got a tough job, I say to myself, ‘thank God I’m not the EPA administrator,’” he said during his speech to the delegates.

Vilsack said Regan has to deal with interest groups, Congress and courts telling him what to do and when to do it.

Regan said there is a 20-year history of courts telling the EPA what to do, and it creates difficult situations such as the dicamba incident.

“No grower wants to wake up in the middle of a growing season to be told one of the tools in the toolbox is now taken away,” he said.

Gackle noted that the dicamba registrations for 2025 and beyond are now under the microscope.

He anticipates product manufacturers will come up with labels that are more restrictive so they don’t face another legal battle.

Gackle expects final cut-off dates for application of the product may be earlier and buffer zones could be increased.

Brent Cheyne, president of the National Wheat Growers Association, said farmers recently had a big win in a legal battle with California over Proposition 65, which would have banned the use of Roundup in the state.

“After six long years of litigation we prevailed,” he said.

“It was a long and arduous battle and there were times I questioned (if) we would win.”

Cheyne said Roundup makes no-till possible, a practice that builds topsoil, reduces air and water pollution and creates better habitat for wildlife.

He said pesticide regulations need to be based on peer-reviewed science from bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences rather than “hocus pocus science.”

“We have to have our crop inputs protected,” he said.

“People need to realize we’re not just out there spraying for something to do. It costs a lot of money to do it.”

—Sean Pratt writes for the Western Producer.

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The decision is a win for farmers who planned to use dicamba products sold by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta on genetically modified soybeans and cotton during the summer growing season, and for the agrichemical companies.

Environmental activists have objected to dicamba herbicides because they are known to drift away and damage other crops that are not resistant.

But farm groups had warned the court ruling, if fully enforced by the federal government, could financially hurt growers who will plant their next crops in the spring. The groups had said most growers had already determined which seeds and chemicals they will use and may struggle to shift away from dicamba herbicides or crops that tolerate the chemical.

“We are very appreciative of EPA’s decision to let us get through the 2024 growing season by using any product already in the delivery pipeline,” said Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association and a North Dakota soybean farmer.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bury in Arizona last week vacated the EPA’s registrations of dicamba-based weedkillers from 2020, saying the agency violated procedures mandating public input. The ruling affected Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and Sygnenta’s Tavium, commonly used herbicides on U.S. farms.

Bayer soybeans that resist dicamba-based herbicide are the No. 2 most-planted soybeans in the United States, though not all are sprayed with the chemical. Bayer and Syngenta welcomed the EPA’s decision to let farmers use existing supplies. BASF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EPA said on Wednesday it authorized the sale and distribution of dicamba products “that were already in the possession of growers or in the channels of trade and outside the control of pesticide companies” before the court ruling on Feb. 6.

The agency “received ample evidence that millions of gallons” of dicamba products meant to be sprayed on crops had already entered trade channels, according to a statement.

The Arizona court decision won’t affect Canadian farmers, Bayer Canada said last week.

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A slowdown in demand for herbicide and pesticides as well as excess inventories had resulted in large destocking in South America, denting the U.S.-based company’s earnings for much of the year.

The company also provided its preliminary 2024 revenue forecast on Thursday. FMC expects revenue in the range of $4.65 billion to $4.85 billion, compared with analysts’ estimate of $4.7 billion, according to LSEG data (all figures US$).

FMC expects 2026 revenue between $5.5 billion and $6 billion.

“As the company launches and ramps up new products, we see a clear path for adjusted EBITDA margins to recover to the mid-20% level, after falling to the low-20% level this year,” Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein had said in a note.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sourasis Bose in Bangalore.

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People have been shocking weeds with electricity for 100 years, but the return on the electricity invested and the technology required to do so safely haven’t always worked.

Crop.zone is a German company developing commercial field-size weed shocking implements, especially to desiccate growing crops before they are harvested and to kill cover crops or hay fields. Crop.zone uses a liquid applied just before the crop is shocked in order to increase the efficacy of the process. The company has been testing that unit in the Outlook, Sask. area this summer.

Now the company has created an implement that can fit on a standard sprayer. The sprayer provides the liquid and the boom unit will fit between the rows, giving the unit the potential to control weeds during crop growth. Crop.zone partnered with John Deere to build the new unit and together they were one of the winners of the top concept award at Agritechnica.

The biggest equipment at Agritechnica for potatoes and sugar beets. It shows how much money is invested in harvesting and processing some types of vegetables. There’s a whole building full of potato equipment at Agritechnica and its impressive the technological innovation that’s gone into managing the steps it takes to get vegetables to the market.

Automation and artificial intelligence solutions are showing up in many places in agriculture, and the products are maturing and closer to market. Naio is a French creator of autonomy solutions for horticulture and high value crops. They have a distributor in Canada and are working to create more dealers across North America. They recently announced that, as long as certain operating criteria are met, that Naio will take on the liability of the autonomous operation of their robots on a customer farm. That’s a big leap to assuage one of the major farmer and insurer concerns about automation.

They told me at Agritechnica that the Augmented Autonomy program will be available around the world.

As well, they sure take their Farming Simulator seriously in Europe.

– John Greig is a senior editor with Glacier FarmMedia. Watch for much more detail on these and many more stories and videos from Agritechnica in our Glacier FarmMedia newspapers and websites.

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