Keep It Clean webinar helps area farmers at Harvest time

Posted on September 11, 2025 by Taber Times

By Kristine Jean
Southern Alberta Newspapers

Area farmers and agronomists are getting some help ensuring the success of harvest crops this year, thanks to the Keep it Clean 2025 Pre-Harvest Tips and Tools webinar. 

The webinar, presented at the end of July, aims to protect the marketability of Canada’s canola, cereal and pulse crops. Webinar topics included proper staging for pre-harvest glyphosate application, the importance of following pre-harvest intervals for crop protection products, and scouting for disease. 

Keep it Clean is a joint initiative of the Canola Council of Canada, Cereals Canada, Pulse Canada and the Prairie Oat Growers Association, providing growers and crop advisers with resources for growing market-ready crops.

Guest presenters during the webinar included Jeff English, vice-president, marketing and communications with Pulse Canada, Kurtis Rempel, vice-president, crop production and innovation with the Canola Council of Canada and Krista Zuzak, director of crop protection and production with Cereals Canada. 

Zuzak provided an overview of the Keep It Clean program, some of the pre-harvest tools and also highlighted some of Keep It Clean’s resources, while she and the other guests also spoke on product advisories for each field crop – canola, pulses and cereals.  

Zuzak emphasized how export-driven the agriculture industry is in Canada and the importance of the export market, particularly where major field crops like canola, cereals and pulses are concerned.  

“Because we do exceed that domestic demand for food, obviously we need to meet our domestic requirements, but we also have these exports or these additional requirements that we need to think about, and we need to think about managing them for a lot of trading partners,” said Zuzak, noting some of the tools used to do this include the 2025 product advisory, that is updated by Keep It Clean on an annual basis. 

Zuzak shared information on product advisories – such as those on pesticides that are registered for crops in Canada – and the need to meet standards and rules set by importing countries. That could include those around diseases, insects or weed seeds. 

“What we really want to highlight today has a lot to do also with crop protection product or pesticide residues,” she said, noting the importance of decisions that are based on science. “As part of this, when we do reviews of our pesticides and the products that we’re using, we might create advisories if there are pesticides that are registered in Canada but perhaps they created market risk,” explained Zuzak. “This might be that there are different standards for that pesticide in that country that we are exporting to from Canada or perhaps we have our maximum residue limits for pesticides that don’t have an alignment between the countries and that can cause problems so to keep markets open, we want to be aware of that and part of that is communicating that through webinars that we have through Keep It Clean.” 

She pointed to steps the industry and commodity organizations are taking, including monitoring policies and regulations and export markets as well as any changes that may occur. In addition, advocating for and maintaining a science-based approach to policy and regulation in export markets. 

“Our tag-line is growing market-ready crops – we’re here as a communication tool and venue and resources to provide updates on these potential market risks and provide resources for on-farm practices so that we can help, through the industry, have our exports meet both domestic and export standards that are so important,” said Zuzak.  

As part of the webinar, Zuzak provided important tips shared by Keep It Clean, and highlighted several issues that might be important on the farm for farmers and agronomists. 

The first tip is to use acceptable pesticides only – apply pesticides that are registered for use on your crop in Canada and those that won’t create trade concerns. The second tip Zuzak noted is to always read and follow the label.

“Our pesticide labels are legal documents and as part of that we really want to emphasize following using the right application timing, applying at the right stage of your crop and thinking about your pre-harvest interval, so those number of days between applying a product and cutting or harvesting your crop,” said Zuzak. “By sticking to those, it really helps mitigate the risk of having pesticide residue issues.” 

She also noted discussions around drones as a new and innovative piece of technology that many farmers are starting to think about, adding that “spray drones cannot yet be used to apply pesticides on field crops in Canada.”

Tip three involves managing disease pressures – that includes best management practices such as growing disease resistant varieties when available, crop rotations, planting clean seed or considering seed treatments under high risk conditions to help improve plant stand and crop competitiveness, as well as help manage diseases. Using an integrated pest management approach is the final point in tip three. 

Tip four is about storing your crop properly, that includes cleaning bins before storing your crop and using only approved bin treatments, never using malathion to prepare canola for storage or to treat bins used to store canola, keeping bins clean, dry and well ventilated and checking their condition regularly. 

The fifth and final tip Zuzak provided is about delivering what you declare, which pertains to the Declaration of Eligibility for Delivery of Grain. 

“When growers are signing this, you’re signing that you’re delivering grain that is of the variety that it’s eligible for, the class if it’s applicable, of what you’re delivering.” she said. 

Zuzak wrapped up the tips portion of the webinar by pointing out additional tools and resources available through Keep It Clean, and highlighted some important details around their pre-harvest glyphosate staging guide. 

“We do have our 2025 product advisory also updated on an annual basis every spring and we also do link updates to that throughout the year, if they’re required to have that timely information, found on our tools (www.keepitclean.ca/tools.),” said Zuzak.  

Other tools and resources on the Keep It Clean website include the pre-harvest interval calculator, shareable content and graphics, news and updates and webinars.