Making the case for more grower supports as pandemic impacts linger

Another growing season is drawing to a close, and as with the last few years, it’s been a challenging one overall for Ontario’s fruit and vegetable growers. 

While some sectors have been less affected than others, there’s no denying that ongoing rising costs, ever-increasing market pressures and regulatory challenges at all levels of government are taking their toll on the entire industry. Over the past five months, the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA) and our partners in the Ontario Agricultural Sustainability Coalition (OASC) have had open and frank discussions on these issues with Ontario’s minister of agriculture, food and agribusiness, Rob Flack. 

It’s a continuation of our advocacy for an increase of $100 million in the annual Risk Management Program (RMP) and Self-Directed Risk Management (SDRM) budget – currently at $150 million annually – that has been ongoing since early 2021.

Since the last investment in RMP and SDRM by the provincial government in 2020, the inflationary impact of the pandemic and its aftermath continues to place a heavy burden on growers. Although most aspects of life have returned to normal, we continue to deal with extremely tight or even negative margins on our farms. 

Despite ongoing high prices at the grocery store, retailers are rigidly holding the line on prices to growers due to imports and price ceilings they’ve set to maintain and even boost their profits. At the same time, we must navigate unprecedented and stubbornly high production costs. At the grower level, this means we are starting to see cracks in the financial sustainability of many of our farm businesses, putting stress on farm families and leading to very difficult decisions for growers as they contemplate their futures in the fruit and vegetable industry. 

Competitiveness is another critical challenge facing Ontario growers. Many international jurisdictions have lower production costs and fewer regulatory and policy restrictions than we have here at home. At the same time, it is likely that the American government will be putting forward an updated $2 trillion U.S. Farm Bill that will bolster crop insurance, expand research, and enhance subsidies to the industry south of the border at the expense of trading partners and competing jurisdictions like ours.

We face competitive disadvantages domestically as well, with Québec fruit and vegetable growers receiving more than double the support than what we have access to here in Ontario. To put it simply, the ongoing rising costs, ever-increasing market pressures and regulatory challenges at all levels of government are hindering the ongoing and future viability of Ontario’s fruit and vegetable production. We need help to ensure we don’t lose our ability to feed Ontarians with locally grown produce.

At the same time, we recognize that the provincial government is facing its own fiscal constraints, and we have built accommodation for those realities into our proposal for an enhanced SDRM/RMP to the ministry. 

In our presentation to Minister Flack at a roundtable he hosted at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in November, I reiterated our ask and the need to continue to move forward with a sense of urgency. Growers are struggling and facing tough financial decisions about how – or even if – to proceed with next season’s crops. 

Over the next few weeks and months, as the provincial government prepares for its next budget, we will continue to demonstrate the win-win nature of our proposal for farmers, taxpayers and the government and how it will let us grow jobs and our agri-food value chain while protecting our ability to produce high quality, reliable food right here at home.