Farmers unhappy with Ottawa’s handling of Russian fertilizer tariffs

Leah Gerber Observer Staff

FARMERS REMAIN UNHAPPY WITH THE Canadian government over a decision not to directly return the money paid by farmers for a fertilizer tariff imposed last year in retaliation against Russia for the Ukrainian invasion.

In March last year, the federal government placed a 35 per cent tariff on all imports from Russia and Belarus (which supports Russia), including fertilizer.

“Last year when Russia invaded Ukraine, they lost their most-favoured-na- tion status from Canada and a lot of farmers had already prepaid in the fall of 2021 for fertilizer that just was going to be shipped in the spring,” said Brendan Byrne, chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario.

“So by the time that fertilizer came in from Russia in the spring, and tariffs had been applied to it, and that had to be paid before it would be allowed into Canadian waters. So a lot of farmers ended up paying a tariff bill that would not affect Russia, it would only affect them.”

He said that the tariff paid by Canadian farmers to receive the fertilizer they already paid for had little or no impact on Russian producers.

“We had hoped that when the tariff came in, that it would kind of get worked out between the government and the actual fertilizer [distributing] companies. But because it didn’t, then the fertilizer companies passed it along to the farmer.” revenues to restore energy infrastructure in Ukraine.

Byrne said the amount of tariff paid by individual farmers ranged from the hundreds to the tens of thousands of dollars.

Josh Boersen is the vice-chair of the Ontario Grain Farmers’ association and a grain and chicken farmer near Gadshill. He says he had to pay around $10,000 extra because of the tariff, noting one of his suppliers honoured the original price quoted, while another did not.

“It comes right out of the bottom line. I don’t know that we cut anything specifically – there was a loss in profits that we could realize to reinvest in the business, so it came right out of the bottom line,” he said.

In December, the federal government announced that Canada was sending $115 million in tariff → FARMERS 15