Environmental Stewardship

At Syngenta, we believe that environmental stewardship is everyone’s responsibility, including ours. The proper management of the land, ecosystems and natural resources is essential for the future of the environment and for the sustainability of the agriculture sector.

We know that the most successful stewardship programs are those that are created and implemented through partnerships at the local level. Here you will find some examples of the initiatives and partnerships developed in Canada.

A growing global population means, now more than ever, we depend on agriculture to succeed and grow. This is why sustainable agriculture is at the heart of what Syngenta does, in Canada and around the globe. Click here for more information on what sustainable agriculture means to Syngenta.

Canada Partnerships

Fondation de la faune du Québec
The Fondation de la faune du Québec has introduced, in partnership with l’Union des producteurs agricoles (the Union of Agricultural Producers), a program to develop the biodiversity of rivers and streams in agricultural watershed areas.

Ducks Unlimited Canada Small Marsh Restoration Program (Maritime Provinces)
This ongoing program restores the productive capacity of wetlands within agricultural areas to improve water quality and provide a habitat for wildlife. Since 2003 , this program allows farmers in the Maritime provinces to take pride in restoring lost natural areas, and in turn demonstrates that farmers are leaders in environmentally sustainable, safe and innovative food production. This project was featured in the Canadian business and Biodiversity program as an industry case study for the International Year of biodiversity 2010.

Ducks Unlimited Canada Saskatchewan Rangeland Stewardship Project
Throughout this nine year program, Ducks Unlimited Canada staff have been working with farmers to adopt sustainable management practices within environmentally sensitive areas in Saskatchewan. Examples of proposed sustainable management practices are summer and winter remote livestock watering systems, cross-fencing, wetland restriction fences, riparian buffer strips and a comprehensive grazing plan. The restoration of drained wetlands and the incorporation of winter wheat into their crop rotations are also part of the program.

CleanFARMS™
CleanFARMS is an industry-led program to recycling empty pesticide containers. Farmers can drop off their containers at over 1,100 collection sites where they are appropriately cleaned and managed. Canada is a world leader in container management, with more than 78 million empty plastic pesticide containers collected across Canada since the program's inception.

Stewardshipfirst®
Crop protection, including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, along with plant biotechnology products have made Canadians' lives healthier and have provided us an affordable, abundant food supply. In Canada, our agriculture technology is highly regulated to ensure that accurate science is followed. The Stewardshipfirst program is an industry-led commitment to go above and beyond the regulatory requirements to ensure the proper management of crop protection and biotech products throughout the product lifecycle. Lifecycle stewardship starts with discovery, research and development, through commercialization, marketing and distribution and ends with recycling, unwanted product removal and disposal.

Potato Sprayer Calibration Project
Syngenta and McCains partner to offer potato growers in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick an on-farm sprayer calibration service. This service includs the calibration and full inspection of spray equipment because a properly calibrated sprayer ensures optimum coverage of the crop and protects the environment from over-spraying and poorly functioning equipment.

Pollinators and pesticides play an important role on the farm...

Both help yield more food per acre. Protecting crops from insect pests is essential to farm productivity, helping farmers keep pace with rising food demand. But farmers need to take special precautions when it comes to pollinators. 

The pesticide registration process requires scientific studies to evaluate the safety of pesticides to honeybees and other beneficial insects. These data are reviewed prior to the sale of products in Canada and are considered in setting label directions and precautions to prevent any impact to pollinators. Read more on Pollinators and pesticides.

More on Conservation Tillage:
  • Some new land will come into agricultural production in the coming years, but other areas will be lost to urbanization and erosion. Worldwide, there are now more people living in cities than in the countryside. Outdated farming practices, deforestation and other man-made factors also continue to cause erosion.  
  • Controlling weeds by tilling the soil surface leaves the field open to erosion (a severe form of land degradation) and compressed by heavy tillage equipment. The soil cannot absorb as much water, which leads to runoff and reduces the natural storage of rainfall for crop use. A greater volume of water running off the surface of tilled land increases the load of soil, nutrients and chemicals that wash into water systems, impacting ecosystems.
  • We develop and promote local programs to help farmers minimize soil erosion and improve soil productivity. The goal is to maintain and improve quality of water and promote efficient water use by developing expertise in water management and use of buffer zones.
  • Syngenta products help reduce soil erosion by enabling farmers to control weeds with minimum tillage. Together with local partners we support sustainable practices to avoid excess chemicals entering watersystems.
  • Our non-selective herbicides, such as Touchdown® and TakkleTM enable farmers to control weeds without tilling the ground. This method – known as minimum tillage – conserves soil structure by leaving roots intact. This prevents erosion and reduces surface runoff by enabling water to be absorbed more easily.