2021 A Challenging Year for the Fruit Industry

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While it may have seemed that 2020 would take the prize for weird and unexpected issues, unfortunately, the strange new challenges just kept coming in 2021. With an extreme weather incident and labour shortages exacerbated by COVID-19, the things growers are familiar with that can’t be controlled (like the weather) took on new meaning. Suddenly, keeping plants cool and keeping workers safe from the extreme heat became primary concerns in the early summer.

Fortunately, that’s far from the only story in this year’s fruit harvest in BC. There was plenty of good news to be had, but it didn’t quite scream from the mainstream headlines like the challenges did. Here, in Orchard & Vine’s annual fruit recap, we bring balance with a look at the things that made growers want to pull their hair out and, perhaps more importantly, the things that made them want to keep growing.   

Heat Dome 2021

The weather folks called it a heat dome, generating high temperatures never before seen in Canada. Lytton, BC recorded the country’s highest ever temperature of 49.6 Celsius on June 29, just a day before the start of the fire that spread and destroyed most of the village. Amidst this chaos, fruit growers scrambled to increase irrigation and keep crops cooler, with limited success.

Raspberries took an incredible beating. Already a fragile fruit, the heat hit when canes were full and ready for harvest. Jason Smith, fourth generation farmer and co-owner of Pier Management and Consulting says he really felt sorry for raspberry growers.

“They were ready to pick when we got that heat and honestly… they got hammered hard,” he says.

One of those growers, James Bergen with Bergen Farms says some of the later varieties weren’t impacted as much as those that dried up from being on the canes during the heat. Growers with south facing berries saw little in the way of salvaging the early season.

“I think back to those days of the heat wave and you see everything you’ve worked towards just go away in the span of 24 to 48 hours,” he says. “You just try to continue and make something out of the season.”

The BC Raspberry Industry Development Council estimates there may have been a 50 per cent loss in production, down to 6.5 million pounds. This is doubly hard since growers were optimistic about the season in early June.

Some of the later berries weren’t hit as hard in terms of quality, but Bergen feels the yield suffered as a result of plants being in shock and struggling.

Fortunately, there is progress in dealing with future heat incidents through the BC Berry Breeding Program with efforts to bring new varieties to growers. While these efforts will take time, 2021 was the second year of funding for the Raspberry Replant Program through the BC Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. Growers who are accepted will share $300,000 towards planting newer, more resilient varieties. This is similar to the BC Tree Fruit Replant Program in that growers can apply for funding to plant varieties better able to meet climate conditions and consumer demand.

Other fruits crops may not have faced quite the same level of devastation as raspberries, but there were very few winners as a result of the extreme heat.

Hank Markgraf, Okanagan orchardist and horticulture specialist with Syngenta Canada in BC, says smaller fruit was the norm in all tree fruits from apples to cherries.

“We left a lot of really small fruit on the trees,” he says of apples. “This is probably the worst I’ve seen.”

In addition to a reduction in fruit size, there were reduced yields and sunburn. Perhaps the only farmers the heat really worked out for were grape growers in the Lower Mainland region. Singletree Winery winemaker, Andrew Etsell says the grapes at the Abbotsford location saw an early harvest and yield is doubled from the 2020 harvest.

Smoke Given the Heave Ho

According to CBC News, nearly 8,700 square kilometers of land were burned in the 2021 wildfires in BC. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the worst year on record, but it was close – the third largest area burned. It would have been expected for fires of this magnitude to lead to extreme smoke issues, but fortunately the pressure was lighter in many parts of BC than in previous years like 2017 and 2018.

Etsell says the winds in Naramata, for example, kept the smoke from settling into the valley. The smoke was in and out, agreed Troy Osborne, director of viticulture with Arterra wines. “We had a bit of smoke, but it wasn’t that bad,” he says.

Less than half of growers who responded to the Orchard & Vine fall survey (44 per cent) noted they had no damage to crops as a result of weather issues. About the same amount, (41 per cent) reported damage due to heat and 13 per cent said they suffered damage from both heat and smoke. Only three per cent faced smoke damage alone.

Wild fires are a heartbreaking issue when growers watch fellow farmers and British Columbians suffer, but the small bright light is that smoke didn’t impact grapes or the fruit that people in the province rely on for healthy, local nutrition.

Be Gone Pest!

If there’s one thing insects love, it’s the heat and with changes to BC’s climate, more and more pests are making fruit crops their preferred buffet. Markgraf points to mites as being the number one pest of the 2021 season. The lack of rain after the extreme heat incident made matters ideal for these heat seekers.

“They love the heat and they love the dust,” he says. “They don’t call them dust mites for nothing. There were more mite sprays going out this season than I’ve seen in a long time. That was across the board. I was even getting calls from the coast.”

Etsell notes there was definitely more pest pressure in the vineyard as well.

“Especially leaf hopper and late flies, they tended to increase, it was a great season for pests with it being so warm,” he says.

The plus side however was that disease pressure in grapes was minimal with powdery mildew (for once) being a non-issue.

“Leafhopper was a bit of a challenge for some growers, just because it was a hopper year,” says Osborne. “You’ll get multiple generations.”

In strawberries, thrips were an issue for some growers. Bergen notes they were more significant in first year berry plants than in more mature fields. Unfortunately, where some insects had a field day with the heat, the spring pollinators were absent in some berry fields according to Smith.

“Pollination was a pretty big issue this year,” he says. “The heat was the icing on the cake.”

Using blueberries as the example, Bergen says BC growers should have hit close to 200 million pounds or more in 2021, but instead, he sees numbers of 140 million pounds being more likely given the poor pollination followed by the heat that shriveled many early blueberries.

Scorch was also a concern for blueberry growers. The disease, which is spread by aphids, can lay dormant in the plant for two years or more, waiting for the right conditions to come out. In the last couple of years, the conditions have been right and scorch has grown as an issue.

Some cranberry growers saw an emergence of blackheaded fireworm, but all in all the tart red berries didn’t experience the same impacts from the heat and insects as other fruit.

Pollination and fruit set looked good in tree fruits according to Markgraf, but when one took a look under the outer branches, it was a different story.

“We had good pollination in tree fruits. It looked great, but then you pick it and it wasn’t what you thought,” he explains. “The crop was just on the outside of the tree. It was an umbrella tree. It fools you. It looks like a great crop but it isn’t.”

Yields and Quality

Given Markgraf’s comment about lower tree fruit yields, and most berry growers experiencing a decline as well, the picture is fairly clear; 2021 was not a stellar year for most fruit growers. Vineyards had perhaps the best season out of all BC fruits, but what individual growers experienced came down to a variety of factors.

While strawberries were shut down by the heat, it primarily delayed harvest, rather than causing the reduction in yields seen by raspberry growers. Many cranberry growers experienced losses due to rot from the heat. Tree fruit growers experienced sunburn. Almost all fruit growers had reduced fruit size and yields.

“In blueberries, it depended a lot on location,” says Smith. “Abbotsford east got hit. I know a couple of growers with 30 to 40 per cent damage on some of their varieties. It was pretty devastating.”

But Smith also saw growers to the west of the Fraser Valley make out relatively okay, as did many on Vancouver Island. The story in the Interior region of BC was similar where it came down to micro climates. Apples may have been plentiful in some regions, but less so in others where the reduced size didn’t help tonnage. Cherries also saw a hit in size and in many cases, yields were down, but quality was reasonable.

As was the case with berries and heat, cherries saw the greatest impact when they were on the outer edges of an orchard. Fruit set was good overall in cherries and those that were within the canopy with some protection from the heat matured into viable fruit.

But COVID Continues…

Labour issues have plagued growers for a number of seasons, but while borders were open to foreign workers this year, there were other complexities according to David Mutz with Berry Haven Farm, and the berry rep on the Western Agriculture Labour Initiative labour committee.

“It was a better year for foreign workers. They were getting across the borders. That was more streamlined this year than last year,” he says. “But the domestic labour supply is just so tight. It’s not just agriculture.”

Many business owners within and outside of agriculture found the CERB payments created a complacent work force among those that may have previously worked in fields and orchards.  

“In the Fraser Valley, we were able to find employees, but the Penticton area, it was tough for us this year,” says Etsell. “I worked a whole lot more. It came down to more of the family doing a lot more of the work.”

Everyone was making changes on the fly to protect the workers that were able to come in to the country and ensure necessary precautions were being taken. Unfortunately, there were some COVID outbreaks that impacted workers and this did nothing to improve matters.

“There were some policy changes,” says Mutz. “This caused a lot of delays in paperwork.”

He also found that a reduction in yields left some workers disappointed with the amount of work available to them. Those that would start the season in berries and move on to tree fruits found their stints were much shorter than usual.

“With the crop damage, there wasn’t as much work,” he says. “It also impacts the workers, not just the farmers.”

Continued Progress

If there’s one message that is loud and clear in agriculture, it’s that moving forward and finding new solutions is the only option. Tech companies, seed companies, growers and other stakeholders are working together to find answers to questions like climate change, feeding a growing population, sustainability and affordability.

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