A couple dozen growers turned out Friday for a meeting at the B.C. Tree Fruits Cooperative packinghouse north of Osoyoos, which is scheduled to close down this fall. The growers are opposed to the closure, but at the very least they want an Osoyoos receiving station so they don’t need to truck their produce to Oliver. (Richard McGuire photo)
Osoyoos-area fruit growers are objecting to plans by the B.C. Tree Fruits Cooperative to close the packinghouse north of town and are considering their options.
A group of a couple dozen growers met in front of the packinghouse on Friday where they signed a petition opposing the closure and discussed next moves.
The co-operative recently announced it is closing the packinghouse at the end of this fall’s fruit season and will be consolidating operations in Oliver.
A retail outlet at the facility will be closing Sept. 9.
The growers who spoke to the Osoyoos Times said their biggest concern is that the closure would require them to truck their fruit to Oliver, but they are also concerned about the impact on the community from loss of employment.
“If they expect us to haul our fruit to Oliver, it’s not going to happen,” said Claude Moreira, who grows peaches and nectarines.
Moreira said growers who just have pickup trucks would need to make five or six trips a day to Oliver.
“Not everybody has a five-ton truck or whatever,” he said. “And with traffic in the summertime, it will be a nightmare.”
Like other growers, he argues that at the minimum the co-operative needs to have a receiving station in Osoyoos where growers can leave their fruit without hauling it to Oliver.
He said it doesn’t matter where in Osoyoos a receiving station is located, adding that it could be in the industrial park.
Louisa Carvalho, who grows cherries, peaches, nectarines, apples and some prune plums, agrees with Moreira.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to drive back and forth to Oliver,” she said. “We don’t have a flatbed truck and we can’t afford to buy one right now, so it just seems impossible to do that.”
She too would like to see a receiving station.
“I have no idea what we’ll do,” she said. “It’s kind of scary actually. We don’t have cold storage either, so I don’t know.”
Carvalho is frustrated with the way the co-operative treats Osoyoos growers, who don’t receive a premium for having the earliest fruit in Canada.
She’s also frustrated that her fruit, which is carefully sorted at the farm, then gets sorted at the plant mixed with the fruit of other growers who don’t take as much care.
“You’re going to get just as much culls as they are, so you’re not being rewarded for the quality of the fruit,” she said, referring to damaged fruit that gets discarded, cutting into the payment growers receive.
Ranbir Kambo, another grower, says the only remaining packinghouses in the co-operative will be in Kelowna, Winfield and Oliver.
Oliver will be the only remaining facility south of Peachland, he said.
“We have different issues than northern growers,” said Kambo. “If they are moving everything towards the north, we’re going to have issues shipping our product. The longer it goes, the more culls we pull out.”
The more the product is handled, the more fruit is damaged and culled, he said.
Sarabit Rai, a grower involved in organizing the meeting, said there are about 80 grower families in the Osoyoos area.
He insists that those who couldn’t make it to the meeting feel the same way.
“More people are working today,” he said. “They’re very busy. It’s a busy time.”
Rai said he’s concerned that younger growers will quit farming rather than put up with having to truck their produce to Oliver.
He hopes to bring B.C. Tree Fruits Cooperative directors to Osoyoos this week to meet with growers and discuss solutions.
“We need to fight to keep it open,” he said, as he passed a petition around for growers to sign.
Major Samra, another grower, said that if he runs out of bins, he’d need to leave his pickers unattended as he travels to Oliver to pick up another bin.
Teunis Van Kalkeren, 77, says he’s been shipping to the co-operative for 53 years and he hasn’t made up his mind what he’ll do if the packinghouse closes.
“My wife and I would look at all options,” he said. “I just live up the road here two or three minutes and we haul it into here. Now at my age, it’s a bit difficult to haul it all the way to Oliver.”
Like the others, he agrees that at a minimum, the co-operative needs to set up an Osoyoos receiving station.
“We used to have that years ago,” he said. “We had a place up in the industrial area when they closed the other house. I think it would be nice if the board would look at that.”
Roger Borges, another grower, said there is currently an uneven balance of directors in the co-operative with five from the north and four from the south.
But he points out that many fruit growers in the south over the years have switched to grapes, which gave them higher returns.
The south, he said, saw more innovation in the types of apples grown, as well as types of soft fruit.
“So the south was doing very well, especially with the soft fruit and having those newer varieties,” he said. “But then the problem is guys went into grapes, so we started to lose growers and then they had to amalgamate with the north.”
Now the north has a larger volume, based on apples, he said.
“By closing this plant, it’s an issue for soft fruit growers because we need to get them into cold storage as fast as possible,” said Borges.
He has been sending his fruit both to B.C. Tree Fruits Cooperative and to independents, such as Fernandes Farms, which is run by his uncle, Tom Fernandes.
Although he’ll continue to sell to independents if the packinghouse closes, he said that independents are also worried about the closure.
The problem is when independents receive too much fruit and are overwhelmed by the volume, they drop their prices, he said.
Borges thinks the co-operative should have separate general managers in the north and the south.
“The problem is everything is done in Kelowna now,” he said. “Vernon growers really don’t know what we’re doing here and we don’t really know what they’re doing in the north.”
Borges said he won’t take his fruit to Oliver, but would sell to independents instead, unless there is a receiving station here.
“I won’t go because I don’t have the time,” said Borges. “If I sell, I have Tom (Fernandes) and he’s close. I don’t have to support B.C. Tree Fruits. It just depends what happens here.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
