The seedy underbelly of farming
B.C. seed producers are taking back control of local seed. | 10
Sweet harmony
Haist Orchards’ video of cherry harvest wins the What’s Growing Canada contest. | 14
Looking for answers
Highlights from 2019 farmer-led research projects on organic production. | 18
February 2020
The seedy underbelly of farming
RONDA PAYNE
The Flavorburst F1 bell peppers showcase a few of the colourful offerings in the 2020 New Varieties. See page 19 for more. Photo by High Mowing Organic Seeds.
Profiling Haist Orchards, the winners of the What’s Growing Canada video contest.
BY ALEX BARNARD
SARAH HARGREAVES
In the pipeline A roundup of the innovation found at Agritechnica
from robotic sprayers to garlic harvest inventions. BY
CHRIS MCCULLOUGH
Fruit and vegetable growers run some of the most agile operations. Whether it’s weather, regulation changes, or a shift in market demand, a plan is only just a plan. Being a grower is about responding to the environment around you to remain successful.
This issue explores a host of new ideas, lists this year’s new varieties, and also introduces a new editor.
I’m excited to learn more about fruit and vegetable production in Canada and I can’t wait to highlight producers who are pushing the envelope and exploring fresh ideas.
livestock. Like you, I will be trying out some ideas over the year and seeing what sticks.
Some new ideas are also brought up within the pages of this issue as well. International contributor Chris McCullough travelled to Agritechnica in Germany to explore new products. On page 26, he shares a roundup of the innovative products coming down the pipeline for growers. New products can help the operation, but so can adding new experiences. On page 30, Cathy Bartolic shares how three different farms embraced their niche and expanded into agritourism. Finally, our organic perspective column follows two farmer-led research projects that find answers for organic vegetable growers through trial and error. These articles are just a taste of the fresh ideas that are circulating in our industry.
As I take some time to learn the ins and outs, I will rely on you, our audience, as my greatest source of information. From emails
“Fresh ideas are transferable across industries.”
This new move represents a homecoming of sorts for me, because writing stories about fruit and vegetable production was what I gravitated toward in journalism school. Since then, I have worked on Top Crop Manager, our sister publication about field crops (also published by Fruit and Vegetable’s parent company Annex Business Media). Our team tries everything from Twitter to podcasts to engage our audience, and as the incoming editor for Fruit and Vegetable I hope to bring some of those ideas here.
Fresh ideas are transferable in any industry. I learned that the strength of agriculture lies in its community. There are many lessons to be gained when producers engage with producers who work in other sectors, such as crops or
and interactions on social media, to a phone call or conversation at an industry event, your lines of communication to Fruit and Vegetable are always open. Please feel free to get in touch if you have an interesting story idea or a piece of industry insight to share. After all, you’re the experts in the field – and it’s my role to share your story. •
- #867172652RT0001 CIRCULATION Roshni Thava rthava@annexbusinessmedia.com Tel: (416) 442-5600 ext. 3555 Fax: (416) 510-6875 or (416) 442-2191 Mail: 111 Gordon Baker Road, Suite 400, Toronto, ON M2H 3R1 Occasionally, Fruit & Vegetable Magazine will mail information on behalf of industry-related groups whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you prefer not
*Actual technology may not be exactly as shown.
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Stokes Seeds announced the acquisition of the Siegers Seed Company business of Holland, Mich., effective December 19, 2019.
Stokes Seeds has retained the employees of Siegers Seed Company and is continuing operations from the Michigan, Georgia and Florida locations with the newly combined organizations doing business under the Stokes Seeds brand.
The ongoing 2019-2020 sales season will be a transition year. Siegers Seed Company customers can expect the same level of service, provided by the
same staff, from the same facilities.
The acquisition combines two organizations that have each operated for over 100 years in the vegetable seed industry. Stokes Seeds will now serve commercial growers from five U.S. locations in Buffalo, NY, Vineland, NJ, Holland, MI, Moultrie, GA and LaBelle, FL.
Stokes Seeds is a distributor of commercial vegetable seed in the United States and Canada, with operations in Ontario, Canada, Buffalo, NY, Vineland, NJ, Holland, MI, Moultrie, GA and LaBelle, FL.
In a statement released in mid-December, the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG) expressed concern regarding the new process for negotiating the sale of processing tomatoes and carrots. The OPVG asserted that the amended regulation, recently announced in December by Ernie Hardeman, Ontario’s minister for agriculture, food and rural affairs, “will devastate Ontario farm families.”
In Hardeman’s
statement, he said that he amended regulation 440 in response to concerns about price negotiation and marketing systems for processing vegetables, specifically tomatoes and carrots. The amendments were made with the intention of addressing “the competitive realities in the province and [encouraging] growth and investment.”
The amended regulation will allow carrot and tomato growers to vote by secret
ballot on how they want to negotiate with processors. Growers can vote to negotiate directly with processors individually or through a negotiating agency. The current system of group negotiation will not change for other processing vegetable growers.
However in response, the OPVG stated that the amendment takes agency away from growers and allows “processors to choose growers they would like to negotiate with.”
“The largest impact is a reduction in collective bargaining power being removed from the growers’ elected representatives and handed to the processors,” said Dave Hope, chair of the OPVG. “We will need to analyze the regulation in detail to determine the depth of hurt to the sector.”
The new regulations also extend the length of an average contract to three years from two, helping provide more security for growers.
Federal, provincial, and territorial (FPT) agricultural ministers met in Ottawa in December to discuss how to improve producer support by updating business risk management programs such as Agristability.
Their second meeting in 2019 follows a particularly difficult year for many producers. The FPT ministers recognize that the risks farmers face have changed.
However, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) expressed disappointment with “the lack of clear progress towards meaningful reform of the Business Risk Management (BRM) suite, and frustration with the lack of urgency in responding to the immediate challenges confronting Canadian producers.”
CFA explains that BRM programs have been in review for nearly three years without meaningful progress or short-term solutions while long-term reforms are created. The CFA states that this “leaves
farmers without much-needed relief at this critical time, nor any certainty that assistance is on the way.”
FPT ministers will reconvene in July 2020 in Guelph, Ont., for their annual conference, at which time they will review assessment reports on BRM programs to be submitted in April, among other things.
CFA president Mary Robinson is disappointed in the delay. “Farmers from across all regions of Canada have clearly identified that a return to AgriStability coverage at 85 per cent without a reference margin limit presents a simple, interim solution that can be implemented immediately,” she says.
Robinson continued, “The fact that the ministers were unable to commit to truly meaningful program reforms, while pushing this issue further down the road through further program reviews, suggests a lack of urgency and a continued disconnect between FPT governments and the realities facing farmers.”
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Sercom is a developer and manufacturer of climate computers, that started in tulip bulbs but now works on controlling climate for potato and onion storage.
Originally, the company started to develop climate computers for local tulip farmers in The Netherlands, where the storage of the bulbs was most essential to safeguard the quality. Soon after that, they adapted the software to control greenhouses. The next step for the company was controlling the climate in storage cells for potatoes and onions. Currently, Sercom have supplied over 90 per cent of the flower storage cells with their advanced computer system and are seeing similar success in Europe since focusing on the potato storage cells.
Early in 2019, Sercom developed a wireless system, based on radiographic technology, to connect field stations in the horticulture and storage cells for, among others, potatoes within a distance of five kilometres. In Europe, this has been applied to many greenhouses but is now also being
applied to potato storage cells. In Germany, several systems have been running with this technology, controlling storage cells, miles away from the actual computer.
In North-America, Sercom have installed the first wireless system on that continent in the horticultural sector, at Holland America Flowers in California, controlling 60 compartments from one central point. A
short video was put online to further explain the actual functioning of the system. It was made with the example of a greenhouse but the very same principle and technology is also applied to storage cells. The video can be found online at youtu.be/6JUNjYXVlKM. Sercom says they are open to partnering with local companies active within potato storage.
A labour management system designed to improve harvest efficiency for the Australian wine industry is expanding into other agriculture sectors.
The Taglog system uses cloud-based technology to track the productivity of pickers in the field to ensure they are paid correctly while holding them accountable for the quality of their work.
Accessible through a mobile app, Taglog uses RFID (radio frequency identification), time and GPS stamps and displays them on a real-time operating platform that enables simple piece rate payroll and invoicing.
The startup has been spun out of Adelaide Hills viticulture services business Group Logistics, which is also known as GLOG.
The bulk of Taglog’s 30 customers are vignerons in South Australia but the technology has also been adopted by apple, pear, strawberry and cherry growers.
Field trials of the system began in 2014 after GLOG managing director Charles Rosback decided to move the company’s pickers from hourly rate to piecework payments to address productivity issues.
Rosback said the vineyards using the Taglog system during harvest experienced increases in the amount of money workers
take home, decreases in the cost of picking grapes and increases in margins.
“Very rarely in any situation do you see a win, win, win so we were fortunate to be able to experience that,” he said.
“We scan the worker and we scan the bucket so we tie that bucket to that worker for a period of time. When a bucket arrives at the trailer and we discover that it’s full of leaves then we can scan that bucket to see who picked it.
“On the back end we can see every worker in the vineyard, what time they logged on, how many buckets they had picked, how many hours they have worked and by putting in the rate we are paying them or the contractor per bucket we can determine the equivalent hourly rate we are paying that person and the average hourly rate that group has earned.”
Rosback said there were a further 35 customers ready to “lock on” and “a couple hundred” more growers or labour companies that had expressed interest from horticulture and other industries.
“Viticulture is the space that we play in so we’ve initially focused on that but we’re looking to bust out into wider horticulture and beyond.
“When we started building the system we
did it in such a way that we could make it fully adaptable for any situation where you’ve got people working in a unit-based working environment, so if somebody came to us and said I want to count the number of cars each worker washes in a car wash then we can do that very easily.”
GLOG works with vignerons throughout the Adelaide Hills and surrounding South Australian wine regions as far north as Clare and south to the Coonawarra.
“They quickly understand that this is a digital technology that provides transparency for the grower and the picker and more importantly it means they can get paid before they leave the vineyard.
“The three things they were looking for were cost, efficiency and quality and this ticks all of those boxes.”
Taglog was among seven wine tech startups to participate in the inaugural FOMENT program billed as ‘Australia’s wine and tourism tech revolution’ in Adelaide last month.
“Our business model is for the domestic market at the moment so while we’ve got some opportunities to go to the export market we haven’t got the business model to suit that right now but with the right investor we could certainly scale up pretty quickly.”
ABOVE
Using local seed will yield better because it is specific to the local climate. Photo courtesy of David Catzel.
there is room to create more organic methods and bring more seed-growers into the market. Each Canadian region has a specific need and interest.
David Catzel might be best described as a seed advocate or perhaps a seed nerd. In his role as director of B.C. Seed Program with FarmFolk CityFolk and as a regional coordinator for The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security (Bauta), he is focused on ensuring seeds become part of the sustainability conversation.
“We’ve had 150 [or] 200 years of seed security moving in the other direction, which is away from the public domain,” he explains. “All farmers did this [grew their own seed] before 1900.”
The Pacific Northwest is one of the world’s best seed-growing regions for dry-seeded crops like spinach and kale according to Sal Dominelli of Sweet Rock Farm on Gabriola Island. It’s a five-acre farm that grows seed crops, produce for farmers markets, about 40 fruit trees and has a small flock of sheep, chickens and a horse. He leases a half acre off-farm to keep some crops separate and grows about 100 varieties of vegetable seeds, though not all in one year.
Together with 15 other growers, Catzel (though his farm cooperative, Glorious Organics Co-op), Dominelli and MaryAlice Johnson of Full Circle Seeds on Vancouver Island make up the B.C. Eco Seed Co-op which includes both certified organic and conventional seed growers.
“Each of them market and sell seed collectively,” says Catzel of the seed co-op. “It’s only about four years old and it’s been contributing fairly well to increasing Canadian-grown seed.”
“We’re not saying we don’t need hybrid seeds or those seeds for large monocrop farms. It’s just that the more seed variety we have, the better we will be.”
“For decades, as farmers have stopped saving their own seeds in favour of buying new, ‘improved’ varieties, our diversity in vegetables and fruits has been shrinking dramatically,” he says. “So much so that many old varieties have been lost.”
It’s a model Bauta believes in. As Catzel explains, the intent of the co-op is to be able to provide seed to both gardeners and farmers. Therefore, whatever is available to gardeners in packets is also available to farmers in weighed volumes.
Johnson intensely farms four to five of her 17.5 acres, leaving the rest wooded. She bought the three parcels in 1986 and went to commercial-scale production in 1989. She now grows more than 200 varieties of seeds. The most popular being tomatoes, but also lettuce, peppers, salad greens, herbs and flowers.
“It’s very well buffered which makes it really good for seed saving,” she explains of the land.
Planting, harvesting and seed distribution can all happen at their own time without too much overlap. Johnson explains she’s been saving seeds since her first year of farming and the late fall to early winter is ideal for getting seed out to others.
“There’s lots of packaging,” she says. “It’s a good thing to do in the winter.”
Like Johnson, growers in the co-op sell their seed through the co-op as well as their own channels such as online or at markets. She fell into seeds naturally and quickly found that farming is her passion.
“I just play really, really hard at my farm,” she says. “Playing with seeds is like playing with jewels. The tactile, the sensory. I was shelling scarlet runner beans and saying to myself, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life whether it makes financial sense or not.’ I’ve been very privileged and lucky to be able to do that.”
Dominelli isn’t sure when the transition from gardener to farmer occurred as it was gradual. He started gardening about 25 years ago.
“Every year I grew more of our family’s food until I set up a roadside stand to sell the extra we had and at one point had an aha! moment where I realized that I could actually make some real money at this,” he says. “I now farm for a living.”
But farming is hard work and it isn’t easy making a living. That’s why the Bauta program and FarmFolk CityFolk are so important – because they support farmers. FarmFolk CityFolk’s seed security program has been running about seven years. It now primarily consists of a mobile seed-cleaning
unit, a seed trial farm in Abbotsford, seed swaps and markets known as Seedy Saturdays or Seedy Sundays and involvement in CANOVI (Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement) through which farmers do variety trials.
“We mostly work with farmers. On the ground with farmers working with seed,” Catzel says. “These are on farmer fields, so we’ll send them 25 different types of carrots. They are blind trials.”
As B.C.’s focus is on vegetables, growers identified a number of seeds they required such as kale, spinach, leeks and beets. Some are hybrids.
“Right now we’re working with carrots and peppers,” Catzel says. “We are working on a red carrot. My job is to convince [farmers] to get into seed growing. There’s a lot of farmers that are doing this already. There’s some farmers out there who probably do this better than the university breeder.”
Catzel cites two main reasons why local seed is important.
“Inevitably, within five years, that company is going to drop that variety and then you don’t have that favourite variety,” he says. “British Columbia is pretty unique because we talk about locally adapted seed, but what does that really mean? We have a lot of different micro climates, so it’s
Right now, the B.C. Seed Program is conducting blind trials with carrots and even working on a red carrot.
really specific, but, it’s still about farmers learning to adapt seed to their own farm. We’re not saying we don’t need hybrid seeds or those seeds for large monocrop farms. It’s just that the more seed variety we have, the better we will be.”
Using local seed will yield better because it is specific to the local climate. Then there’s the consolidation of seed companies to consider. They will invariably reduce the number of varieties they offer and it will be a challenge to find that variety that works well on a few farms, but not across North America.
Plus, while hybrids can be more productive in some cases, Dominelli notes that they are often bred using synthetic fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides and can perform poorly when grown in an organic environment. He adds that heirloom varieties that are more resistant to disease, do well in drought and thrive in certain regions are close to being, or are already, lost.
“I didn’t think too much about it until one year, I tried to buy a bean seed that I had quite liked and it was no longer available,” he explains. “It was a bit of a revelation to realize that seed companies drop varieties all the time, for various reasons. I managed to track the variety down somewhere else and have been saving it ever since.”
Johnson is focused on not relying on others for her seed. “We use our own seed to grow for the market [produce] so we don’t need to buy much seed,” she says. “So we save quite a few [crops] for letting them go to seed.”
The importance of seed can’t be underestimated. “People understand local food. They’re getting there now. It’s like the buzz word. So even places like Loblaws and Save On, they try to push that idea and nobody thinks about where the seeds came from to grow that food,” Catzel says. “There’s a bunch of seed companies in Canada and I’d say 90 per cent of the seeds they sell aren’t grown in Canada.”
Perhaps Dominelli sums it up best when he says that all food comes from seeds first. No seeds, no food, and these B.C. seed growers are striving to fill an assortment of local appetites. •
Haist Orchards at cherry harvest is a flurry of activity, and Jim Casson’s contest-winning video captures the perpetual motion required to take the cherries from farm to finish.
Bright red cherries rain down, shaken from their trees by a harvester to “Let’s Shake,” a jaunty bop by Hamilton, Ont.’s Teenage Head.
BY ALEX BARNARD
“Jim is a very talented guy,” says Linda Allison, farm-runner of Haist Orchards and Jim’s aunt. “And it certainly shows the process – from tree to harvester to flushing and cooling at the barn, to loading and sending ice cold cherries on their way to Cherry Lane in Vineland, for processing.”
In early December, Casson’s video was selected as the winner of the What’s Growing Canada video contest, run by Fruit & Vegetable magazine
ABOVE
and BASF Canada. Over the course of the 2019 growing season, farmers across Canada were invited to submit production-focused video clips from their operation for a chance to win, among other prizes, the grand prize package of two tickets to the Ontario Fruit & Vegetable Convention, held in February 2020 in Niagara Falls, Ont., and $500 CDN.
Casson’s career as a musician makes him uniquely situated to interpret farm life for those outside of it. “So many people don’t understand the process of – from tree to table,” he says. “So, this was one way to show them, in a concise little video, the process of how we get the cherries off
A video of the cherry harvest at Haist Orchards won the What’s Growing Canada video contest.
the trees and ship them off to the factory.”
While Allison didn’t know what Casson was doing with the film equipment at the time, she was thrilled with the result. She adds, “It’s fun for people to actually see the process of picking cherries by machine. Lots of people, even in Pelham, haven’t seen a harvester work. When those cherries fall onto those harvester nets and then roll up the elevator, it’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen.”
The mechanical cherry harvester is part of her family legacy. Her father and uncle, Howard and Cecil Haist, were entrepreneurs in the ‘60s. “They brought the first cherry harvester to the Niagara region – there were already mechanical harvesters in Michigan – and that was a big deal. And from then on, things just started to fly.”
For Allison, the Haist family’s role in Canadian agriculture is a great source of pride.
“My family started six or seven generations ago here in Pelham,” Allison says. “My great-great grandfather and my great-grandfather came from Germany and started with mixed farming and moved
into fruit.” Casson agrees. “There’s a lot of pride involved because of the family history,” he says. “And knowing that it’s putting good product into the markets and onto the tables of people in Ontario and Canada.”
When asked about the future, Allison’s infectious enthusiasm dims just a little. She says that, two years ago, an extremely cold January resulted in a loss of 50 per cent of their older orchards come springtime. “Now the farm looks very different. There are young orchards and there are mid-aged orchards – 10 years to 15 years,” she says. “But in between all these orchards there are now empty fields, because we’ve made the decision, along with most growers around here, to not replant.”
Falling cherry prices – down from 45 cents per pound when her father ran the farm to 15 cents per pound in 2019 –played a major role in this decision.
“I don’t know where we’re going, I just hope it’s still farmed,” she continues. “I hope it still looks fabulous when you drive down Highway 20,” Allison says. “Jimmy’s ready [to take over the orchard], and I’m ready. I mean, I probably should have
retired five years ago. He’s ready to take over, but I don’t want him to take over at 15 cents per pound.”
Allison swiftly shakes off uncertain thoughts of the future, back to her cheerful demeanour. She notes that they’re trying to find another use for the fields in the meantime. For the moment, she’s happy to tend the fields while sitting on a tractor. “Especially mowing,” she says. “I love to make the farm look great.”
Allison has many farming family members still in the Pelham area, but her sense of community pride also extends to the friends she’s gained over her years on the farm, of whom she speaks with obvious affection. Success, she says, “Depends on who you have around you – family who are encouraging, farmer friends who are smarter, older, more experienced,” she says. “All these people help you to just keep going.”
“It’s just something you have in your blood, I think,” Allison says. “I grew up here on the farm. We’ve gone through a lot of changes, but the truth is we’re only caretakers, aren’t we? You’re just doing good things on the land, or hope you are, until the next generation takes over.” •
The top ten finalists from the What’s Growing Canada video contest share the ups and downs of being fruit and vegetable producers in Canada, from consumer interactions to urban encroachment.
BY ALEX BARNARD
We had a chance to chat with some of the What’s Growing Canada finalists. One thing that came up time and again was the importance of community – to success, personal satisfaction, and a sense of pride in what each farmer (and Canadian agriculture as a whole) produces.
“For us, the way we farm, the most rewarding [part] is being able to talk to the customer that’s actually buying our products. So, we’re constantly working with the customer and the consumer. That’s always rewarding. Whether we’re selling to chefs, whether we’re selling to people at the farmers markets, we have that face-to-face connection all the time. So, they love what we do, and it’s great to have that recognition every time, every sale.
“I think if I was just growing, and never seeing that part, and just getting it to the wholesaler, and you never really see anything, it wouldn’t be the same. I think what we love about farming is because we have that connection.”
Kevin Klippenstein, Klipper’s Organics
“I suppose being invested and being prideful of what we have to offer as Canadians, not only internationally but also nationally – offering ourselves – and being proud of the food we can produce. And our ability to distribute across the province, across Canada. It’s amazing.
Challenges and setbacks are a fact of life, but that doesn’t make them any easier to deal with, especially when it’s your livelihood on the line. To handle them, you’ll need plenty of creativity, grit, and support.
“I mean, there’ve been lots of challenges. It’s been up and down, up and down – perseverance, trying to keep going.
“We changed – we got rid of the tobacco. There was an opportunity there, and my husband wanted to grow something different – he always wants to do something different. That, plus it was at the time when they were encouraging you to get out, and his parents owned the rights – like the rights for the tobacco – so there was an opportunity there to do something different. The research farm at that time was doing trial testing and things like that on peanuts. We were at the right age, young enough to try something different.”
“Ontario itself is the main grower of so many awesome things, and we’re able to share that with the rest of the country, so that, to me, is exciting – that we can grow our own food. But not only that – we also have a connection that we can make with our local consumers, because we grow these foods and we’re able to share that love with them, and support, and build that community with them, and share that pride with them, so that we’re all connected and on the same page with where our food comes from.”
Sarah Judd, Meadow Lynn Farms
Nancy Racz, Kernal Peanuts
When it comes to competition – especially from larger companies – emphasizing what you can offer your consumers and adding a personal touch to your interactions can make all the difference.
“Something that we’re proud of is our retention rate. So, the most recent competition we’ve been faced with, since we are a food subscription service, if you will – people buy into our farm, and in return we share our harvest – was the up-and-coming of HelloFresh, Chef’s Plate, those kinds of boxes. It’s definitely put a blip. They’re dealing with our consumers, they’ve made it a lot cheaper.
“We’ve been able to hold our member numbers – we have a very high retention rate. We have a lot of people staying on our program. We’ve had people on our program since we began, and we run every year. And we have two seasons – we have winter and summer – and we’ve had people in every season since we started in 2007-08. So, something we’re particularly proud of would be our customer service – the community we’ve built, being able to overcome competing
against much larger companies that are trying to do what we do.
“They’re making it a lot cheaper for people, and getting it right to their house. It hurt us a little bit, but we have a very good community of people supporting us, and we were able to overcome it pretty quickly.”
Kelsey Owen, Coopers CSA
Urban space encroaching on arable land is a major issue faced by many agriculturally important areas. However, some are focused on changing the mentality that it has to be one or the other, recognizing the possibilities cities hold in produce production.
“I think that the urban spaces – there’s lots of spaces that people can grow in. Cities are starting to allow people to grow food on their front lawns – I think that’s a pretty cool thing.
“It’s almost like we’ve got to go back to when I was a kid on the farm – but I lived in a rural community, so there was lots of space to grow food. But now I’m in an urban centre. I didn’t realize how much I relied on food coming in from
other places. And I think people are really starting to realize that. If the trucks stop rolling, or there are problems, you start to see it. If there’s a problem like a snowstorm and the trucks aren’t getting through, there’s no butter on the shelves, or there’s no eggnog for Christmas, because it’s coming from somewhere else.
“So, I think it’s important that we do what we can, to provide the tools that our communities need to grow their own food.”
Siobhan Shaw, Crop Circles Farm
Being able to connect with your consumer on a personal level is a privilege, one that many farmers recognize wholeheartedly. Cultivate the kind of community you want to support you, and your consumers will recognize the privilege it is to connect with you, too.
“So, in our specific arm of the industry, we get the privilege of feeding people directly. We grow beans, wheat, but you never see the end user, you don’t necessarily get the opportunity to watch their face as they consume something,
because a lot of the time they don’t even realize what’s in what they’re consuming, and sometimes, unfortunately, they have a misunderstanding of what they’re consuming.
“But for sweet corn specifically, we get to see their joy, and that is such a privilege. I think about my own family, and when I make a meal for them, they’re over the moon. And there’s something about nourishing the body that just brings people together, and we’re a part of that. So, that’s a pretty neat thing. And because we are strictly retail, we get to see who our customer is. I can’t always be at the stand, but when I am, I hear stories about how much people love and enjoy it, and how devoted they are to it, and it really makes us aware of what a privilege it is to be part of a community.”
Brenda Snyder, Snyder’s Sweet Corn
This is just a glimpse of what there is to be proud of in Canadian agriculture. On behalf of Fruit and Vegetable magazine and BASF Canada, thank you for sharing your videos with us, and keep up the good, hard work! •
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F1: Chinese hami melon. Oblong fruit, 4 to 5 lbs. Yellow skin with green streaks, orange flesh, sweet with centre brix 14 to 16 per cent. Maturity: 85 to 100 days.
F1
F1: Chinese bitter melon. Medium maturity. Beautiful shape with blunt end. Bright green. 10 to 12” long.
Dark-skin onion with a very nice round shape and a large size. Small necks that cure down well, making June an easy storage date. Maturity: 98 days.
Courtesy of Norseco.
A great hot powder-making variety. Pods will stand out in the garden and on the table or on top of salad. Fresh pods are good for heating up salsa and cooking.
Very early onion with good skin. One of the earliest, if not the first, to harvest. This round onion has a small neck which dries down well to give a tight close at the top of the bulb. The bulb continues to increase noticeably in size after leaf lodging.
of Seminova.
Yellow variety of Bishop’s Crown has the same great flavour and heat. These pods will stand out in your garden, as plants can reach 6’ high and yield hundreds of pods.
4 to 5 lb. fruit with sweet (15 per cent brix) orange flesh and a productive plant habit. Flavour is similar to that of Sugar Cube. Resistance to PM 1,2 and Fusarium 0,1,2. Maturity: 73 to 75 days.
Courtesy of Stokes.
Very round bulbs, very uniform, in a nice dark red without any sun scald. Small neck. Good storage potential. Maturity: 103 days.
Courtesy of Norseco.
Hot cherry-type that is the perfect shape for pickling, stuffing and processing. The 1.25 to 1.5” peppers are great-tasting and easy to pick.
2 to 3 lb. eating melon with exceptionally high sugars; designed to offer a seamless harvest transition from an early planting of First Kiss to the later-ripening True Love. Fruits are full slip.
Courtesy of High Mowing Organic.
AAS winning variety; early season production of thin-walled, crunchy, 3 to 4” fruits with warmth and a refreshing citrus flavour. Large, resilient plants produce shiny, bright green fruits that mature to a brilliant red. Sweetness reminiscent of a juicy bell pepper.
Courtesy of High Mowing Organic.
No-heat jalapeno pepper; concentrated set of dark green, thick-walled fruit. Decaps well. Scoville rating below 20 makes this pepper perfect for processing.
Courtesy of Rupp Seeds.
Early-ripening 3 to 4” fruits mature from lime green to bright yellow; golden when fully ripe. Slightly elongated, three-lobed fruits produce abundantly on short, durable plants. Flesh is thick and juicy with a vibrant sweetness.
Courtesy of High Mowing Organic.
Offers high yields of sweet bell peppers that quickly ripen from green to orange. Sweet and flavorful, medium-sized fruit with a blocky bell shape. Includes a superior disease-resistance package.
Courtesy of PanAmerican Seed/Ball Horticultural.
A great replacement for Tabasco; plants grow larger and have slightly bigger pods that have the same traits; great for fermenting sauces. Plants grow very well in Canada.
Courtesy of Atlantic Pepper Seeds.
A family heirloom from Mike Stefancsik, Lethbridge, Alta; medium sized, green chili-type pepper with “extreme” heat, which matures to a beautiful orange colour. Maturity: 70 days.
Courtesy of T&T.
High yielder of great-quality, dark green peppers on a strong structured plant, with excellent leaf coverage. The fruit set is well suited for those looking for extended harvest. HR: Xcv:0-10, PVY: 0-1; Tm:0. IR: TEV
Courtesy of Seminova.
F1 hybrid. Early maturing cayenne pepper with large, 55 to 65 g fruit. Improved plant with better cover and high yield potential due to fruit size and set. 800 SHU.
This eye-catching variety makes great powder. Very hot; can be used to heat up any dish. Pods start out light green and ripen white.
Courtesy of Atlantic Pepper Seeds.
Super-hot ghost pepper – as hot as it is beautiful. In a class of its own, with black stems, dark leaves and bright pods. These pods have a Scoville (SHU) of around 1,200,000+.
Courtesy of Atlantic Pepper Seeds.
Purple-skinned potatoes with deep, yellow flesh. Round to oval tubers; high in antioxidants, low glycemic index. Good resistance to tuber malformations, less susceptible to hollow heart than Yukon Gold. Excellent for fresh market with good storage quality.
Courtesy of High Mowing Organic.
Speed and endurance; an early pepper with high yields of 3.5” fruits over a long harvest window. Compact plants prolifically produce big, blocky, four-lobed fruit. Recommended for greenhouse culture but performs well outside.
Courtesy of High Mowing Organic.
3 to 4” white peppers with attractive, blocky shape and fresh flavor. Compact plants produce an abundance of fruits that will mature into a matte yellow; meant to be harvested in their white stage as an early colored pepper.
Courtesy of High Mowing Organic.
Very dark green, will start turning orange after around two months of storage. Tolerant to powdery mildew. Maturity: 95 days.
Courtesy of Norsecot.