By Roy Wood, Special to the Times Chronicle
It looks like provincial help might be on the way for Okanagan tree fruit growers faced with the prospect of having nowhere to ship the crop that will start coming off the trees later this month.
But mystery continues to surround the abrupt closure late last week of the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative.
In a surprise letter to its 300 or so members last Friday, the co-op’s board of directors announced the immediate cessation of operations due to “extremely low estimated fruit volumes and difficult market conditions.”
The letter urged members to “immediately search for another alternative to market your fruit for the balance of the 2024 season.”
BC Tree Fruits did not return calls from the Times Chronicle seeking further clarification.
The province was also taken by surprise by the abrupt closure. It has indicated a willingness to help, but so far has been short on specifics.
In news release Tuesday afternoon, Agriculture Minister Pam Alexis said: “While, the province has no authority to take over the board of such an entity, at this time, ministry staff are consulting with the BC Fruit Growers Association and working with individual farmers to explore available options for getting their fruit to market.”
Boundary Similkameen MLA Roly Russell said in an interview it seems to make sense that a solution to this crisis might involve use of the BC Fruit Growers’ facilities. “I don’t know why we wouldn’t have the cooperative’s assets as part of the conversation. Is there an opportunity? I don’t know, I can’t speak for the ministry.”
Gaining access to the shuttered BC Tree Fruits packing and storage facilities would not be an easy matter, Russell said.
“We’ve got a staff of 250 people or something there and we’ve got some assets that are high quality. … But the creditors obviously get first crack at what that looks like, so it’s not a simple conversation.”
From a technical perspective, the Oliver packing house could be used to receive this year’s crop, according to RDOS Area “C” Director Rick Knodel.
Installation of a new automated apple processing line was nearing completion last week and would have been operational for the crop coming ripe toward the end of the month, he said.
“They’d have to finish building the apple line, but that was three weeks away from completion,” he said. “It’s all there. There’s no heavy construction left. … It’s just commissioning the machine basically. So, yes, it’s more than capable of (being ready).”
In separate interviews this week, Oliver Mayor Martin Johansen and Knodel expressed mystification how a major player in the agricultural industry could suddenly close shop without a hint of warning or any plea for help.
Johansen said: “It came out of nowhere. Nobody I know had any word that anything was going on there.”
He said he had been to groundbreaking ceremonies and tours of the co-op’s primary facility in Oliver. “Then I read the article (about the closure) and I’m thinking, ‘Are they talking about the Oliver facility where they are investing 80 million dollars?”’
Johansen called the decision “bizarre. … You would think there would be some reach out for help long before you just put out there, ‘We’re done.’ … It just doesn’t add up. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something that’s just not adding up.”
Local politicians from Oliver, Osoyoos and the RDOS were given a tour earlier this year as the facility was completing the installation of its $80 million high-tech automation system. Don Urquhart photo.
Knodel had a similar take. “This whole thing strikes me as strange. There’s something else going on here that I can’t put my finger on. Like, who benefits from this?”
If the co-op had managed to hang on until the fall after the apples had been processed, there would have been substantial income, said Knodel.
“The more you look at it, the more you wonder what the hell were they thinking,” he said. “To me, it was premature or was there something else afoot? I can’t say.”
Without some sort of intervention, said Knodel, many of the apples soon to ripen will “rot on the tree or fall on the ground.”
There are independent processors in the valley, he pointed out, but they don’t have much extra capacity: “All the independents combined could only handle possibly one third the volume that B.C. Tree Fruits carries, so relying on them is a non-starter.
“Many are not set up to the shipping standard demanded by Costco, Walmart, Loblaws, and the others, nor are many capable of the regulatory requirements that B.C. Tree Fruits had already attained in order to ship to Mexico, California, Vietnam and other countries.”
Rick Machail is part owner of Fairview Orchards, an independent packing house in Oliver. He said he has been flooded with requests from orchardists who suddenly have nowhere to ship their apples. “We don’t have any more room for growers. We’re at capacity,” he said.
“It’s pretty sad,” said Machail, “You spend all this time growing the fruit and a month or so before you start harvesting suddenly there’s nowhere to go with your fruit.”
Machail said he is also nervous about the effect on prices that the processing crisis will have.
In the normal course of events, he said, much of the apple crop would go into “controlled atmosphere” storage at BC Tree Fruits so that the apple crop can be doled out over the whole year.
“But now, all of a sudden, a lot of that fruit is going to be sold before Christmas from regular storage. It’s going to be a lot of extra fruit. That could have a real negative impact on pricing. No question,” he said.
Aside from the growers concerns about where to process and sell their apples, the closure of the co-op’s facilities has employment consequences, particularly in Oliver.
There are people who have moved there to work in the expanding packing house. “It was becoming one of the biggest employers in town,” said Mayor Johansen. “It has an effect on the economy.”
As well, he said, the expansion has led to “a lot of contractors who had significant contracts for the refrigeration and the expansion and all the line work. I’m concerned that people are going to be left high and dry and getting pennies on the dollar once all the dust settles.”
Although there was speculation that the BC Tree Fruits closure is resulting in Growers Supply Company, which is owned by the co-op, shutting down, Seradaye Lean Tag, Technical Sales Manager at Growers Supply Company said the subsidiary of the Co-op is not at this point impacted directly. “Although we will be affected by changes made to the co-operative as we are a subsidiary of the co-op, we are still open for business Mon-Fri 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.”
The agricultural supply outlet has offices in Oliver, Penticton, Kelowna, Vernon and Cawston and supplies pesticides and herbicides along with general agricultural goods and consumables. Knodel noted it would not be easy to replace the supply outlet “because the licensing for pesticides alone is enormous.”
Taking a longer-range view, Russell said it is important to recognize “the reality of climate change and how unpredictable it has been for these growers for the last few years, whether that’s hail damage, rain damage for cherries, the heat dome from a couple of years ago and now … abrupt freezes.
“What does that system of support look like for farmers and how do we make sure it’s suitable for the time?”
