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News

Ontario: complete overhaul of processing industry's pricing system

17/04/2019 - François-Xavier Branthôme
Ontario Agriculture Minister Ernie Hardeman says on 16 April that the province’s vegetable processing industry’s marketing and pricing system must be overhauled — two years after the previous Liberal government was forced to fire the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers’ entire board of directors.
The current price negotiation and marketing system for processing tomatoes is not working for processors and growers,” Ontario Agriculture Minister Ernie Hardeman wrote in an open letter (*) Tuesday afternoon. “This has been a long-standing problem. Again this year, negotiations faced significant challenges.”
Maintaining the current system poses a real risk of losing processing plants and related jobs. Too often we have seen the crop year in danger and the future market for Ontario processing vegetable growers put in jeopardy. As Minister, I am not prepared to put these jobs and farmers at risk.”

 The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, he continued, has been instructed to come up with a new marketing plan for the industry “that includes direct contracting between processors and tomato growers, and to look at options for other processing vegetables.”
That approach, Hardeman said, should “encourage processing investment, enable growers to be profitable, and result in a sector that is competitive and sustainable in the future.” The new system, he added, should be in place in time for the 2020 crop year and will include consultation with industry, including direct consultation with growers.

Tensions over tomatoes are not new
Two years ago, then-agriculture minister Jeff Leal instructed his deputy minister Greg Meredith in March 2017 to immediately disband the market board’s board of directors after tomato negotiations reached an impasse. In a letter to growers, Meredith said the move was necessary because of fears of “irreparable harm” to industry.
Former NDP agriculture minister Elmer Buchanan was appointed in the board’s place to oversee the 2017 price negotiations and was tasked with monitoring the election of the board’s new members in 2018.
Risking this year’s tomato crop and the thousands of jobs that support it is something I am not prepared to do,” Leal explained at the time.

More than 125 fruit and vegetable crops are grown in Ontario each year, with the province home to some of Canada’s top produce growing regions. Greenhouse production alone contributes some CAD 782 million annually to the province’s farm gate. The province is also home to 16 vegetable processing facilities.
On Tuesday, Hardeman said the vegetable processing sector is not meeting its full potential.
Despite a growing market, Ontario production growth has been flat, exports of Ontario tomato products have declined to a third of what they were 10 years ago, imports have increased dramatically, the sector has seen a lack of processing investment, and there has been an exit of key processors,” he wrote, noting it’s a trend both he and industry would like to see reversed.

In 2013, Heinz announced it was closing its tomato-processing plant in Leamington, Ont. The plant, which employed some 700 workers, had been in operation since 1909.

Some complementary data
(*) 
Open letter from Minister Hardeman

Source: ipolitics.ca
Open letter from Minister Hardeman
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