CKUA

[Tackler]

An al-Qaeda yard sale?

Debate rages as farmers bypass fertilizer dealers to import potentially explosive ammonium nitrate from Russia

JOE FRIESEN

March 1, 2008

WINNIPEG -- Just before Arctic ice closed the shipping lane last October, a Russian freighter carrying enough ammonium nitrate fertilizer for nearly 5,000 Oklahoma City-sized bombs docked at Churchill, Man.

It was hailed as a new frontier, the first-ever inbound shipment to arrive at the northern port across the Arctic bridge from Russia. But questions are being raised about the ship's cargo, which is the same potentially explosive materiel allegedly sought by the 17 men accused of a terrorist plot in Toronto in 2006, and which was also used in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

After it left Churchill, 9,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate was delivered directly to farmers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and stored in their barns over the winter. Now, a group that represents the major farm retailers is crying foul, saying those farmers could be inadvertently putting national security at risk by storing the ammonium nitrate on their own property, and not at locked retail facilities. It's something they want to see addressed in federal explosives regulations that could become law as early as this month.

"We have a large amount of a product that we know to be in high demand from both criminal and terrorist elements loosely secured throughout the Prairie provinces," said Dave MacKay, executive director of the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers.

"In my opinion, if we're not careful we could have an al-Qaeda yard sale going on in Western Canada."

Jason Mann is the chief operating officer of the Farmers of North America, a Costco-style group with more than 8,000 members that arranged for the fertilizer to be sent from Murmansk, Russia, to Churchill.

He says his opponents are motivated by money, not concern for national security.

"It's got nothing to do with homeland security or an al-Qaeda yard sale or any of that foolishness," Mr. Mann said. "The Association of Agri-Retailers are just looking for any way to keep us out of the market. They want to make their money off farmers and they'll spin any story, say anything they want, to keep us out."

If anything, Mr. Mann said, fertilizer dealerships are more likely targets for theft.

"If I'm a terrorist, where am I going to look for fertilizer? Through some guy's barn in Morris, Man., or am I going to the dealership with 20 white bins in it?"

It's a debate driven by the skyrocketing cost of fertilizer, a product that makes agricultural land more productive at a time when grain prices are soaring to record highs.

Prairie farmers say their fertilizer costs have more than doubled over the past year, to about $600 a tonne. Those who bought the ammonium nitrate from Churchill paid a lot less, Mr. Mann said.

"You've got four players in the market controlling the market, and all these little farmers trying to make their best deal," Mr. Mann said. "They don't have a hope. We combine all the resources of these individual farmers to create some balance."

Glenn Blakley, head of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, said farmers are supportive of the FNA, and no one is worried that al-Qaeda is lurking on the back roads of the Prairies.

"That's absolute garbage. What they're doing is using the fear factor so they have a captive marketplace, and of course there's the record profits they're reporting," he said.

Ammonium nitrate is no longer widely used on the Prairies, in part because manufacturers stopped making it for security reasons. It's more commonly found in Eastern Canada, where some of the men accused in a terror plot in Toronto are alleged to have tried to acquire three tonnes of the substance.

In the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols built a two-tonne bomb in the back of a Ryder truck using ammonium nitrate and a mixture of fuel and other explosives. At present, ammonium nitrate sales are not restricted in Canada, although a Natural Resources Department document identifies it as the product at greatest risk to be used for terrorist or criminal purposes because of its widespread use.

The RCMP said it takes the issue of ammonium nitrate storage seriously, and set up a 1-800 number for farmers or retailers to report suspicious activity as part of the Canadian Fertilizer Institute's On Guard for Canada campaign. They couldn't say whether the phone line had ever been used.

Mr. MacKay of the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers said his group isn't just reacting to competition from the FNA. It wants to see a level playing field, he said. The federal government is about to impose new restrictions on the storage and handling of ammonium nitrate that will require retailers to build secure storage facilities with alarms, locks, key controls, lighting, safety and security plans, regular inspection schedules and detailed record keeping.

He's asking the government to help pay for these measures, estimated to cost about $120,000 initially and $20,000 a year after that, as they did when making port facilities more secure after 9/11.

"If we're expected to invest in substantial infrastructure for security but the growers don't necessarily have to do that, that just destroys the market for us," he said. "It's economic suicide."