Some Canola Growers Flout EPA Pesticide Rule : Agriculture: An insect that plagues the lucrative crop is eating into profits. A chemical that kills the pest is banned, but not for crops that will be exported. That loophole gets stretched.

Canola, farmers say, is a Cinderella crop--the sudden demand is so high that they can sell as much of it as they can grow.

Cinderella crops come along as often as lovelorn princes. And in their scramble to fit the glass slipper, some in the U.S. canola industry--farmers, buyers and processors--are defying federal laws.

The Environmental Protection Agency has yet to approve pesticides to fight an insect that plagues canola. When U.S. producers are allowed to use unregistered pesticides, the law requires that their crops be exported.

So some farmers truck their canola across the Canadian border and then back to U.S. processing plants. In other cases, buyers have created documents to show canola is exported when, in fact, it never leaves the country.

The reason is simple: Canola, an oil made by crushing the seeds of a variety of rapeseed, is a hot commodity.

Canola oil is lower in saturated fat than all other vegetable oils, roughly 6% compared to 13% for corn oil. It also is high in mono-unsaturated fat, which helps the body eliminate fatty deposits, and recently was touted as a healthy way to reduce cholesterol in movie popcorn.

In addition, leftover canola meal is used for livestock rations. Its roots improve the quality of the soil, and wheat farmers can diversify by adding canola to their crop rotation without investing in costly equipment.

The bottom line: In Canada, which dominates canola production worldwide, prices have increased by 40% since last fall.

For U.S. growers, the fly in the ointment is the flea beetle, a voracious pest that flourishes under the same cool, moist conditions favored by canola.

“These insects feed so rapidly that, in the course of several hours, a crop can be completely eaten down,” said Jim Gray, crop protection manager for Intermountain Canola Co. of Idaho Falls, Ida.

The solution is a pesticide known as carbofuran, which is planted in granular form along with the seed.

The problem with the solution is that although the EPA allows farmers to use liquid carbofuran on crops ranging from alfalfa to grapes, it prohibits use of the granular version for most crops.

When planting equipment is raised at the end of a row, a few particles of seed and pesticide dribble out on the surface of the soil, Gray said. Carbofuran-coated granules attract birds, who need sand or grit to digest their food. The chemical kills birds, though there is no evidence that it harms humans.

Linda Lyon, a researcher for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says carbofuran is one of the most toxic agricultural pesticides in use, and one of the most studied. “What we’ve found is that even when it’s applied in-furrow, at a low application rate with state-of-the-art equipment, we’ve had bird kills.”

Some researchers disagree, and Gray is among the canola growers and processors lobbying the EPA to approve the carbofuran for use on canola. Without it, he contends, the crop cannot survive.

In Canada, carbofuran granules have been used for years, though the Canadian Wildlife Service is considering restrictions.

It is illegal to import canola that has been grown with carbofuran into the United States, but the federal Food and Drug Administration monitors just 1% of all imported commodities. John Jones of the agency’s Center for Food Safety said there are no plans to expand those inspections.

“Canadian canola, treated with the same pesticides, is coming down here anyway,” said Cavalier County, N.D., extension agent Ron Beneda. “It’s the law. But it doesn’t make any common sense.”

North Dakota, Minnesota and Montana growers have EPA approval to use carbofuran on the canola they produce for export--and they do.

But Bill Mickelson, who farms near the border at Rolla, N.D., said, “The canola we raised last year never went to Canada.”

Mickelson had a contract for his crop with Northern Sales of Winnipeg, Manitoba, which arranged for him to deliver it to a local elevator.

“When they trucked it out, I knew it was going to Fargo,” Mickelson said.

Glenn Malkoske, a canola contractor for Northern Sales, denies that happened. But Gray said it happens all the time.

Buyers “create a paper trail that says the crop is exported, not wanting to go to the expense of shipping it to Canada and turning around and delivering it to a U.S. crusher,” he said.

That makes the crushers uncomfortable, he said, because they don’t know if a shipment is legal or not, “and it’s real uncomfortable for the growers.”

What really upsets farmers, though, is that canola could be an enormous crop in the United States--if carbofuran were allowed.

Mike Weiss, a researcher at North Dakota State University, said domestic consumption of canola is 1 billion pounds annually. He estimates it would take 2.5 million acres to meet that need, roughly 13 times last year’s production.

North Dakota led U.S. production with 47,000 acres of canola in 1993.

“Procter & Gamble would buy that much in one month,” Weiss said.