Ontario Berry Growers eyes marketing board

Friday, March 20, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

The Ontario Berry Growers Association is getting close to filing a proposal with the provincial organization overseeing regulated marketing to establish a marketing board for the berry industry.

If approved, it could mean a 900 per cent increase in fees for some growers.

Association president Jenn VanDeVelde says there’s still time for growers to submit any concerns or thoughts to the association or to the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission on the marketing board proposal. And there will be additional opportunities for growers to have input as the commission considers the proposal.

Establishing a marketing board would provide the berry association with “stable and reliable funding,” says VanDeVelde, who along with her husband, David, has a strawberry, raspberry, vegetable, tobacco and cash crop farm near Delhi. Government funding for programs and research is dwindling at the same time as industry is being called on to put more money into various programs and research projects.

“How our association currently runs is effective for growers and we do a lot of great things on behalf of growers,” she explains. “This initiative would just allow us a greater capacity to serve the growers in the province based on a more stable funding model” and it would include all growers.

The idea is to “strengthen the voice of berry growers provincially,” she says, noting the association has received lots of positive feedback on the proposal.

Will Heeman of Heeman’s Strawberry Farm near London agrees the berry industry needs a stable funding source.

The association’s current limited funding has enabled it to do a small amount of marketing but not much research and it hasn’t been able “to put out calls for proposals for research over the last few years,” says Heeman, who’s a past president. “To have a strong association you need to be able to be doing those things.”

Association executive director Kevin Schooley says currently the association is funded through a voluntary annual fee of $150. The amount hasn’t changed in 10 years. It has 170 grower members along with corporate members too. The association is also funded through a strawberry plant checkoff and fees from administering the system to collect royalties for new berry varieties.

Its budget is currently about $60,000 annually. The strawberry plant checkoff where growers pay $5 for every 1,000 plants they buy from an Ontario plant grower would be eliminated if the marketing board proposal is approved.

Schooley says provincial and federal governments currently require industry to help fund research and promotion activities. “In most cases 50 per cent (of funding for programs) has to come from industry.”

The association is finding it a stretch to fund research projects, he adds. “We have very little research going on in berries right now because we don’t have a berry breeder at the University of Guelph.” The provincial agriculture ministry also doesn’t have a berry breeder, while the federal government has one small fruit breeder for all of Canada located in Nova Scotia.
 
“Not that long ago there were three breeders within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Two of them retired and those positions will not be refilled,” he explains.

Under the new proposal, the berry marketing board would have a budget of about $200,000 annually collected from an acreage fee from strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and blueberry growers with an exemption for farmers with less than two acres. The proposed annual fees are:
•    Two to 4.9 acres - $300.
•    Five to 9.9 acres - $450.
•    10 acres to 19.9 acres - $675.
•    20 to 29.9 acres - $1,025.
•    30 acres or more - $1,375.

Schooley says the fees would be assessed per crop so a farmer growing two acres of raspberries and four acres of strawberries would pay $300 for each of those crops for a total of $600.

However, it’s being proposed to cap the fee so no grower would pay more than $1,500 a year.

The budget under the marketing board proposal includes annual spending of $25,000 to $30,000 on research and another $20,000 to $25,000 on promotion and marketing. “We’re trying to reinvigorate the research program,” he says.

VanDeVelde says the proposal to the commission will be finalized at the Berry Growers’ board meeting March 31.

Schooley says the commission has to accept the association’s proposal before it can move forward. Once the berry association files its proposal, Farm Products could require changes or have additional questions. In addition, “we have a period where we have to continue to get the message out to growers.”

So far, the association has discussed the proposal with growers at its annual meetings in 2014 and this year. The proposal was also discussed during a session at this year’s Ontario fruit and vegetable convention.

Schooley says the commission will likely hold a producer vote sometime after November or in the winter of 2016.

In some cases, the proposal refers to the establishment of a ‘local board,’ “but the growers know it as a marketing board,” he says. “The sad thing is when people hear the terms ‘marketing board’ it comes with negative connotations.”

The berry marketing board would not have the authority to issue quota, set prices nor establish and control farmers’ production levels. Farmers would still be able to produce as much as they want, he says. “The more the better.”

There are about 400 berry growers in Ontario. BF