NOVEMBER 2010
CELEBRATING 130 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
VOLUME 60 NUMBER 11
The best storytellers win media coverage By Karen Davidson Telling a good story is like peeling an onion. The everyday is made dramatic with the aromatic. The Holland Marsh Growers’ Association (HMGA) has made an art of telling an earthy story about vegetables that usually don’t get hero status. At their firstever Soupfest in mid-October, they attracted 3,000 visitors slurping everything from squash to purple carrot soup. In all, there were 28 farmer-made soups on offer. It didn’t hurt to invite all the other local farmers with dairy products, honey and artisanal wares. “Freshness matters,” declares Jamie Reaume, executive director, HMGA. “Local Food Plus carried out a survey with consumers blind tasting soups with Californiasourced ingredients against soups with Holland Marsh-sourced ingredients. It’s totally unscientific, but the Ontario soups won.” The soup celebration is timed to coincide with root vegetable harvest so that visitors can see machinery at work. All those visuals are ideal for TV camera crews that love to get out of the city of Toronto – just for an hour – and return in time for six o’clock deadlines. “We have some very mediasavvy farmers in the Holland Marsh,” says Reaume. “Jason Verkaik is a hit on Breakfast TV with his purple carrots.” Farmers are slowly becoming the next media superstars. They are where chefs were 10 years ago, when Food Network TV was born. It’s a concept that Reaume
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FOCUS: Seeds and rootstock
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www.thegrower.org P.M. 40012319
has exploited with “The Fresh Life” series on SunTV. Several Holland Marsh farmers cook with chefs, explaining how the raw ingredients are grown, sprinkling in a few fun facts for good measure. Enough footage has been gathered that a documentary could be in the works in the year ahead. Other commodity groups are forging links to culinary celebrities. The Prince Edward Island Potato Growers are launching an on-line cooking show with Michael Smith, the native son who has several shows on Food Network TV. Called Food Country, the show has already taped chair Boyd Rose and director Kevin MacIsaac in the field with Smith digging up different varieties of potatoes and then showing how they are prepared in the kitchen. “This is a new way to use food media,” explains Kendra Mills, communications director for the PEI Potato Growers. “Research is telling us that consumers are taking their laptops right into the kitchen for inspiration.” In addition to this project, growers recently taped in the field for CBC’s Rick Mercer Show that will be aired November 9. Coincidentally to be aired while the growers are attending the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, the show will give a fun spin to the spud. “The Royal is a huge consumer show for us,” says Mills. “We don’t have a big budget, so we need to spend carefully. Continued on page 3
The Holland Marsh Growers’ Association has coined the term “soup bowl” for their prodigious production of onions, carrots and celery. This vegetable trio is the aromatic base for most homemade soups. Here, Doug Van Luyk shows his 2010 onion harvest near Newmarket, Ontario. Just a few of these onions along with carrots, parsnips, kale and leafy greens will be sold at a new farmers’ market at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, November 5 to 14.
J.M. Smucker to close Ontario Bick’s pickle and processing plants By Karen Davidson American multinational J. M. Smucker is consolidating production in the U.S. with the planned closure of its Ontario pickle plant after the 2011 growing season, throwing 150 employees out of work and ending contracts for 130 cucumber growers. The wellknown company has a tank farm north of Delhi and a vegetable processing facility in Dunnville, affecting another 35 pepper growers and five red beet growers. “Any time you lose diversification, it’s very disappointing,” says Marshall Schuyler, Simcoe, Ontario, holder of a significant cucumber and red beet contract. “I can’t say I was surprised
because they have been downsizing for several years and not growing their business. I’ll be looking for alternative opportunities in cucumbers, but am not optimistic.” According to a corporate news release, the decision will move production to third-party manufacturers in the U.S. and a facility at Ripon, Wisconsin for savings of eight million dollars. The Smucker’s plant buys about one-third of Ontario’s cucumber crop for its popular Bick’s brand. Other processors such as Hartung and Strubs may not be able to absorb the tonnage. In the last couple years, U.S. based Hartung -- now the second-
largest processor in the market -has been a welcome buyer of Ontario’s high quality, hand-harvested cucumbers. “It’s never a good thing when a processor closes in your back yard,” says Al Krueger, executive assistant, Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers. When Smuckers bought the plant, he says their focus was purely on the Bick’s brand, eschewing a strategy of supplying private brand pickles. That decision may have cost dearly, however, as reduced volumes and the resulting rising overhead would have impacted profitability. Unfortunately, the possible result is an iconic Canadian brand being
supplied by a U.S. plant. The announcement sets back the sand plains diversification plan where farmers have been shifting out of tobacco says Chris Van Paassen, chair, Norfolk Agricultural Advisory Committee. “Cucumbers were a natural fit for the skills of our local farmers,” says Van Paassen. “This situation speaks to the fact that Canada does not have a national food strategy. It’s a cheap food policy. Until we have a sustainable farm policy, we’re at the whim of importers and multinationals.” The ultimate pickle crunch will come in 2012. Who will take up the volume?