pineberry
It has white flesh with red seeds and boasts a hint of pineapple flavour and it’s getting much attention in the U.K.Examining the Pineberry phenomenon, looking for growth, shipping and distribution opportunities is like studying one ripple in a big pond. Causes for ripples are numerous: a thrown rock, a fish just under the surface.
Trying to determine whether the Pineberry ripple will make it across the pond or subside into the general chaos is similar to making sense of the global fruit commodity market.
Unlike the grain market, fruit is more accurately a mishmash of many commodity markets. Where a grain farmer can go to the commodities board operating out of Chicago and find out what the going price was for a bushel of hard red spring wheat in 2011, there is no such place to check the price of apples, blueberries, cherries, grapes or Pineberries. Fruit prices, as Debbie Etsell, executive director of the BC Blueberry Council points out, are “purely market driven.”
Instead of one single fruit market, there are thousands worldwide. Perhaps tens of thousands. Tapping into each market works best with local knowledge.
When Okanagan farmers complain prices are so low that it would cost them money to pick their apples they are really referring to the price they were able to get. It’s entirely possible the same apples are a hot commodity in say Maine or South Africa, but there’s no simple way for B.C. sellers to know.
Angelo De Simone is a lifelong farmer and entrepreneur. He moved to Canada from a farming background in Italy 1974 and since then has run every aspect of the apple business. As well as being a farmer he has owned wholesale and retail operations, run deliveries and packing houses.
He purchased his Kelowna apple farm in 2007 when most farmers were decrying abysmal returns. Last year he grew about 800 bins of apples - Ambrosias, Fujis, Galas, Spartans, McIntoshes and Red Delicious
De Simone deliberately chose apples over other kinds of fruit. He explains, “We went into apples because you have a longer time to sell it. You have a longer window to sell.”
De Simone makes a profit every year, doesn’t take government money and has not tapped into exotic markets in Ghana or Taiwan. Instead he sells most of his fruit into the most saturated market in the country: the Okanagan, from Salmon Arm to Osoyoos. Other fruit goes into various markets across western Canada.
“I always believed that if you work hard, contrary to what most people say, you can survive.”
He’s also subscribes to working smarter. He sells at the farmgate and wholesales to smaller, local retailers, but if local buyers are few he applies elbow grease to find buyers further afield. “If you don’t know where to sell it, and if you don’t have connections, it is very hard.”
Across the country Jenn VanDeVelde is owner of the Wholesome Pickins farm and a member of the Ontario Berry Growers Association marketing and promotions committee. Although the farm plants a variety of vegetables, blueberries, cherries and raspberries the main crop is strawberries.
Like De Simone, VanDeVelde isn’t looking to foreign markets to provide her living. She says, “We do move some of our product to the wholesale market, but we see our future as local.”
VanDeVelde’s biggest competition is coming from south of the border, as she struggles against California strawberries.
VanDeVelde believes those berries can’t compete with the taste of the half dozen varieties strawberries ripened in the dirt of her farm, but she understands one of the huge factors is year-round availability of fruit.
“I understand the dilemma of the grocer who must now provide strawberries all year long.”
Even if VanDeVelde’s strawberries are superior in taste for seven months of the year, imports are the only taste consumers can get the rest of the time, so they get used to the taste, even if it isn’t as good, and it is now part of Canadian culture.
Margins are also different. VanDeVelde says prices set in California are for growers who can rely on year-round growing.
De Simone sees lower American prices for apples as a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. “I look at the American prices and we can still compete; we just make less profit.”
Karen Fenske is the president of Stratpoint Solutions, a company that helps organizations work out strategic plans. She is currently working on plans with the BC Raspberry Council and the BC Blueberry Council to set up national councils because both groups have products that have outgrown local markets. As BC Blueberry’s Etsell points out, “We need to expand markets because we have expanding production every year.”
In Fenske’s mind a national council would raise money for marketing. “Right now our resources are very limited. If the national councils were in place we could levy our local producers and the importers and have a bucket of money to promote the product.” The U.S. has been imposing a levy on Canadian fruit imports for just such a purpose for years.
Blueberries have been one of the successes of the B.C. agricultural sector in the past decade, but success tends to attract more farmers. The number of blueberry producing farms in B.C. sprouted to a record 858.
As De Simone notes about apples, “If you want to get into the big export market you need to have enough of the right grade and right sizes.”
It’s not that different for blueberries. To be a big player you need consistent product and lots of it, but that doesn’t come cheaply. Etsell says, “To be a global partner in the production of food you need much more investment.”
The United States has been taking nearly 90% of B.C. blueberry exports, but that market is saturated.
“We would like to see work on China, Japan and Asia. There is also some work to do on market access,” Etsell says.
And it’s not just about selling blueberries.
“If the council had any large amounts of dollars available they would want people on the ground.” The blueberry is as unfamiliar to most Asians as the Pineberry is to Canadians.
Increasing consumption means translating the berry for local cultures. Not only getting a product into a market, but persuading people to try it. The question becomes: does blueberry cobbler translate into Japanese?
For De Simone, Fenske and Etsell if you can’t beat competitors from the U.S.A., China or Chile on price point there are still options. The first is to find someone on the ground familiar with an area’s culture who can provide connections. Either you do it yourself, like De Simone, or, for Etsell, create a national council that can hire foreigners to raise the profile of the Canadian berry in their homeland.
The marketing money raised will go to De Simone’s Chinese or Japanese equivalent, someone who knows how to pry open opportunities in their corner of the world.