Okanagan farmers are scrambling to get their fruit to market after the sudden demise of their growers’ co-operative.
Even if they figure out how to get their fruit to market this year, the future remains unclear.
BC Tree Fruits, a 300-member co-operative, announced on July 26 that it was going out of business immediately. While the 88-year-old organization’s decline had been visible, no one expected the co-op to shut its doors without notice.
Growers, the real owners of the co-operative, weren’t consulted. No membership meetings were held. Just a “We’re done. Good luck.”
“It’s a very bad situation,” says Jennifer Deol of There and Back Again Farms in Kelowna. “Growers who counted on the co-op to take their fruit, pack it, store it and supply equipment they need, like bins, were suddenly left to take care of all of that on their own.
“You’re very disheartened and frantic because you’re left on your own,” she said from her roadside fruit stand.
“We are a week away from picking our grapes. We’ve already started picking our apples, but we don’t have the supplies we need. We don’t have bins. We’ve lost our packaging. We’re just frantic and trying to figure it out on our own.”
The province assembled a list of private packinghouses for growers to call, but that and other measures feel like small potatoes to some.
Some are skeptical whether they can get a fair deal from private packers.
“You’re trusting the packer to do the right thing,” said Deol. “You’re rolling the dice. If they tell you they made no money off your apples, you have to trust that.” Deol adds that Tree Fruits was required to disclose that information.
Whether private packers can take the extra business is also a concern.
“The private sector does not have the capacity to take all the apples that come to market,” she says.
The province says growers are getting their fruit to private packinghouses.
The BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food estimates that approximately 11,800 tonnes (26 million pounds) of apples, originally intended for distribution through the co-op, will now be processed by alternative packinghouses. More than 100 co-op members have arranged for their crop to be distributed by other packinghouses.
One of those private packinghouses, Okanagan Sunshine Fruit Packers, is taking on what extra business they can, but they’re already busy with their own fruit, says director Raj Gill.
Okanagan Sunshine has farms all over the valley. In 2020, they opened a larger and technologically advanced processing plant in East Kelowna to replace an older one in Oliver.
Gill says he gets calls daily from farmers looking for help. “We’re trying whatever we can to help them out.”
Even though BC Tree Fruits might be seen as a competitor, Gill says the industry was stronger with a successful co-operative.
He and Deol say that the larger farmers will have an easier time finding a place for their fruit.
BC Tree Fruits’ demise affects more than member growers, Deol says.
“It destabilizes the whole industry,” she says, citing organizations that counted on the co-op’s advocacy role and employees who are losing jobs. “A backbone of the tree fruit industry has been removed.”
Provincial government’s assistance has yet to extend to support the co-op’s preservation.
More than 2,500 people have signed an online petition urging the province to save BC Tree Fruits. However, that effort faced a major setback when a B.C. Supreme Court judge ordered the sale of the co-op’s assets in late August.
Recently, the province boosted funding for the AgriStability program. The new Tree Fruit Climate Resiliency program will provide $5 million to help tree fruit farmers buy equipment and pursue projects that were not eligible under previous programs.
To access the AgriStability Enhancement Program, B.C. farmers must be enrolled in the federal-provincial AgriStability program. Approximately 360 B.C. tree fruit growers are registered in AgriStability, which represents about 90 percent of growers.
Larger farmers will get most of those funds, thinks Deol.
The government says it’s aware small growers must be a priority. After the Tree Fruits collapse, an industry-led emergency table was formed, including individual farmers, private packinghouses and the BC Fruit Growers Association and BC Cherry Association.
The Tree Fruit Climate Resiliency program will be developed following the apple harvest. Potential projects for funding include wind machines, orchard wheaters, crop cover systems, and other methods aimed at protecting crops during the winter, according to Ministry staff.
In creditor protection proceedings, which the province is monitoring, the co-op reported it has more assets than debts.
Meanwhile, a legal effort to save the co-op continues.
In an online video, Lake Country grower Alan Gatzke says “There is a competent team doing its best to save that co-op.”
A group of about 70 growers are also trying to come up with a new co-op arrangement to sell their fruit, says Deol.
For Deol and her husband, the latest developments have pushed them out of the apple business. They’ll continue growing vegetables and enough fruits to supply their popular fruit stand, but apples have been a tough business for a while.
‘This was the final nail in the coffin for us,” she said. “We were teetering."
Support Programs
Tree Fruit Climate Resiliency Program
A new Tree Fruit Climate Resiliency program will invest $5 million to help farmers buy equipment and pursue projects to strengthen tree fruit farm resilience. This new funding stream is for mitigative infrastructure projects, cost-shared at 80/20 with growers, instead of current cost-sharing at 50/50.
Exemption to 50% Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) Rule
With the closure of the co-operative, private packinghouses will be taking an increased volume of fruit. To support and provide a legal pathway for storage, packing and marketing, the province is making a temporary exemption to the requirement that value-added products processed on the ALR must have at least 50 percent of processed product sourced from the farm itself or from a formal collective of farms. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food will consult with industry to determine the length of this temporary exemption.
$4 Million Redirected to Cover Past Harvests
Growers waiting for money from BC Tree Fruits for past harvests will not have to wait for court processes. An estimated $4 million in provincial funding is being redirected through Investment Agriculture Foundation to pay growers what they are owed for fruit from prior seasons.