After a long day in the sun at a late-summer field day, my colleague Jeff Douglas and I grabbed a booth at a local diner.
We’d barely sat down when a potato grower I will call “Arthur” came straight over. He wasn’t there just to greet Jeff — though Jeff is well-known in the industry — but to share the results of his field trial.
“You were right,” Arthur said. “It’s like I’m growing a different crop.”
Jeff, the founder of Douglas Ag and exclusive Canadian distributor of the soil fumigant Strike, gets this a lot. I’ve seen growers approach him in airports, at conferences, even in parking lots. The message is usually the same: they were hesitant at first, but now they can’t imagine farming without Strike.
What makes Arthur’s enthusiasm especially powerful is that it reflects a broader shift — growers across Canada are discovering for themselves just how much impact this tool can have.
Jeff’s involvement began in the late ‘90s when TriCal introduced chloropicrin (the active ingredient in Strike) to Canada, initially for tobacco. He ran early trials, managed applications, and built trust acre by acre. By 2005, most tobacco growers he worked with had made the switch.
Jeff and I kicked off potato trials in the early 2000s, first addressing common scab. That’s where our friendly rivalry began — Jeff insists the first potato trial happened in an Ontario field. I’m convinced it was my University of Florida research plot in Hastings, Florida. Either way, we agree: chloropicrin has reshaped how growers manage soilborne disease. (Unknown to us at the time, potato trials were first conducted at Washington State University in the 1960s.)
Since our first trials on common scab, chloropicrin has proven effective in suppressing other diseases from verticillium and rhizoctonia, to powdery scab and more. In fresh markets, it boosts quality; in processing, it’s about yield. As Jeff says, “the proof is in the truckloads.”
Still, adoption has not been instant — especially in regions where soil fumigation is unfamiliar — but success spreads. In New Brunswick, a road that once had only one or two treated fields is now fully lined with chloropicrin-treated acres.
That kind of growth doesn’t happen on product performance alone — it takes trust. Jeff’s team is in the field helping growers from start to finish: setting up equipment, monitoring progress, and troubleshooting when needed.
The model is simple: one grower, one trial, one success at a time. Then the neighbours take notice.
“We still market it the same way we always have,” Jeff says. “Just give me a few acres in your worst field. If it doesn’t work, I’ll move on. But if it does — well, that’s how millions of pounds later, we’re still here.”
And still arguing about who started it all.
