Cleaning Up Old Ag Chemicals

Farmers in Alberta are able to dispose of obsolete or unwanted agricultural pesticides and medications in High River Friday.

CleanFARMS has gotten together with CropLife Canada and the Canadian Animal Health Institute to deliver this program.

Russell Hurst with CleanFARMS says since 1998 they've gathered over 2-million kilograms of pesticides

"Specifically in the Alberta marketplace, this is our fourth sweep of the province and we've picked up approximately 300,000 kilos of obsolete pesticides," he says. "From a livestock medication standpoint this is actually the first time we've delivered a livestock medication disposal program in Alberta. We just started the partnership with the livestock industry in 2014 and this is the first time we've delivered it in Alberta and I think it will be quite successful when we wrap-up the program and look at the volume."

He says many of the chemicals that have been brought in in the past have sat on shelves or in out buildings for years.

"Often what we find when growers are bringing back product it is quite old and more often than not it's been sitting farm drive sheds for decades, in many cases," Hurst says. "A rough statistic, we try to track many of the products that come in but from a very general standpoint about 50 per cent of the volume that we bring into our programs is in excess of 30 years old so it does provide farmers a viable and responsible disposal mechanism."

He says it also gives producers another opportunity to show they are good stewards of the land by disposing of the product properly.

They'll be collecting pesticides and animal medications from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fri. Oct. 30 in High River at Crop Production Services.