Canada’s $5 billion horticultural industry is going through some tough times but it has a difficult time getting government and public attention, industry leaders complained last week.
“Horticulture often is overshadowed by other sectors,” Canadian Horticultural Council executive vice-president Ann Fowlie told the CHC annual meeting March 6.
The industry faces declining revenues because of low prices, rising costs, farm labour shortages and a lack of effective programming.
The industry accounts for 38 percent of all crop receipts in Canada and is one of the largest farm sectors in provinces outside the Prairies. Yet it is has a low profile.
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“The size and significance of the horticultural sector is not always understood in the farm community and by policymakers,” the CHC said in a brief. “Part of this misunderstanding can reflect that diverse nature of the horticultural sector with over 100 different horticultural crops produced across the country from cranberries to peaches in the fruit sector, to asparagus to greenhouse tomatoes in the vegetable sector to potatoes and a vast array of floriculture products.”
By contrast, grain and livestock sectors have fewer commodities and more concentrated messages.
Outgoing CHC president Ken Porteous said last week part of the problem is that the industry does not offer its national lobby organization enough support. The CHC has an annual budget of $650,000, is projecting a deficit this year and next and can afford to employ only three full-time and one part-time employee at Ottawa head offices.
He suggested members should offer more financial support and get behind the organization rather than criticize.
“We need to get behind the horticultural industry and fund it as it should be if it is to survive,” he told delegates.
Among key industry issues highlighted during the convention were:
- Declining net incomes because of low prices. The CHC said more than one-quarter of horticultural operations lose money each year and the bankruptcy rate is the highest in the farm industry, “10 times higher than for poultry farms or for grain and oilseed operations.”
- A shortage of farm labour, made more difficult by union organizing in some provinces and increases in provincial minimum wages. Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz told delegates the recent federal budget will make it easier to bring foreign workers into Canada.
- The lack of a production insurance plan that allows producers of different commodities to insure themselves against crop loss.
Production insurance has been promised for years by federal and provincial ministers and is supposed to be part of the new generation of farm programs taking effect April 1.
But no effective program has been designed and Ontario is only running pilot projects on a self-directed insurance program favoured by some producers.
Ontario Asparagus Growers’ Marketing Board representative John Jacques told Ritz that horticultural sector producers have been let down by governments.
“We were promised production insurance and now people in this room are left with nothing,” he said.
Ritz said he would watch the pilot projects in Ontario and see what can be done but it is important not to create industry-specific aid programs that could attract trade challenges.
