JUNE 2010
CELEBRATING 130 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
VOLUME 60 NUMBER 06
Labour pains squeeze growers By Karen Davidson An old proverb says that many hands make light work. But vegetable grower Jason Ryder is searching for the profit. With Ontario’s minimum wage rising to $10.25 per hour on March 31, Ryder’s costs have risen substantially with no way to extract those increases from a marketplace that enjoys asparagus and green onions from Mexico, Peru and California. Both these crops require hand picking and bunching. And he and his neighbour require 68 offshore workers plus 22 local hires to get the job done. As a University of Guelph grad, Ryder says no statistics course can help this real-life situation. He grows 130 acres of green onions, 105 acres of asparagus and 35 acres of horseradish near Delhi. Ontario. He has taken two courses of action. First, he bought a value-added horseradish business. Second, he increased onion plantings by four per cent with another 25 acres. It’s a crop that pays by piece work. That means if workers are fast, they actually earn more than minimum wage, but Ryder can better control his input costs before the product is sold. “I’ve been to California, I’ve been to Ireland looking at ways to mechanize,” says Ryder. “They are actually switching back to hand labour sourcing cheaper workers. With a niche crop such as green onions, it’s hard to mechanize because everything needs to be hand-picked and hand-
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www.thegrower.org P.M. 40012319
bunched.” By his calculations, Ryder says that 50 to 58 per cent of the total cost of vegetables is comprised of labour. “It’s one thing to make a living, but it’s quite another to make the cost of living,” he concludes. Elsewhere in Canadian horticulture, the story is the same. At Berry Haven Farm Ltd. near Abbotsford, British Columbia, David Mutz and his father Henry grow 75 acres of berries, mostly raspberries for the fresh market. Even growers who grow for processing and use mechanical harvesters require Indo-Canadian and Mexican workers to steward and harvest the crop. Mutz figures that hand labour to harvest raspberries will cost 75 cents per pound this summer. For jam-grade raspberries, he might gross 75 cents per pound, but it’s still early in the season. “Raspberries are now a world commodity,” says Mutz “with South America, Poland, Serbia and the U.S. all players. B.C. produces 22 million pounds of raspberries compared to 900 million pounds (2008 estimate) globally.” Not far away, Alf Krause operates a top-notch fruit and vegetable farm at Langley, B.C. with 175 acres in total, 40 of which are strawberries. “The processing industry is finished,” he says, “so we hand pick berries for the fresh market.” He hires upward of 75 Indo-Canadian, Asian, Mexican and Guatamalan workers to bring the harvest home. Continued on page 3
More than half of the total cost of vegetables is comprised of labour – an expense that trims margins to the bone. Ontario has increased minimum wage to $10.25 per hour, the highest of any province in Canada. The back story comes to life with Jason Ryder and his Caribbean work crew who take a weather break from asparagus harvest at Delhi, Ontario. The vegetable farm transitions at the end of June to green onions, another crop that requires hand picking and bunching. Photos by Denis Cahill.
Prudent consumers ready to spend more Canadians spent $7.8 billion on produce last year – up four per cent By Karen Davidson Recession-battered and now cautiously optimistic, Canadian consumers are still a priceconscious lot in the grocery store. Tracking data from The Nielsen Company shows consumers bought more produce through the recession as a key ingredient for home-cooked meals. They are now ready to increase expenditures on produce with new-found confidence in the kitchen. “Although we see strong signs that we are emerging from the global economic crisis, we’re not out of the woods yet, with Canadian consumers still clearly uncertain about their future,” said
Carman Allison, director of industry insights, The Nielsen Company, at the recent Canadian Produce Marketing Association (CPMA) meeting in Vancouver. “We’re on the road to recovery, but restraint is the new consumer mantra.” Consumers will increasingly look to club and discount stores for low prices. The growth of discount retailers is notable particularly in western Canada, perhaps due to the softening of the resource economy and recently emerging opportunities in that market. Drug channels are increasing their share of the produce market.
The locavore movement continues to drive awareness of locally grown foods while sustainability issues are returning as a consumer concern. The sheen on organics is starting to fade as consumers admit they are expensive, sometimes 50 per cent more expensive than conventional produce. That said, one in four consumers say they have purchased organic produce in the last year. The cache of marketing data reveals a prudent consumer. Fewer shopping trips are recorded to the grocer, down four per cent, however the basket of goods continues to grow with an increase of three per cent to $47.41 per trip.
“We’re on the road to recovery, but restraint is the new consumer mantra.” - Carman Allison Canadians are buying more of the essentials – meat, produce and dairy – while cutting back on non-edibles. Is the treat fresh asparagus? Just-picked blueberries? Despite data that shows Canadians are making fewer food shopping trips, produce trips are holding up. Continued on page 4