Canadian fruit and vegetable growers are bracing for “the worst year in history” — not because of the quality of their crops but because they don’t have enough people to pick them. Theirs may be an essential industry, but government assistance is falling short against Mother Nature’s timelines.
In any year, a series of early May frosts killing off tens of thousands of dollars worth of asparagus might keep Norfolk County’s asparagus growers up at night.
But this year, Ontario produce farmers have another problem: not enough workers to pick their crop, with the first harvest starting this weekend.
“This will go down as the worst year in history for asparagus, and likely for a lot of other crops,” said Bernie Solymár, the executive director of the Asparagus Farmers of Ontario.
The green shoots maturing in the sandy soils around Simcoe may be as tasty as ever. But “we’re looking at, at best, fifty to maybe sixty per cent of our crew. And that’s it,” he said.
If it isn’t picked, it isn’t sold.
“Probably we’re going to harvest maybe 50 per cent of our crop,” Solymár said — the equivalent of leaving $12 to 15 million in the field.
The COVID-19 pandemic imposed travel restrictions and safety regulations that delayed, discouraged and in some cases prevented seasonal agricultural workers from arriving in southwestern Ontario this year.
Fearing a pandemic “hot spot” that could overwhelm the region’s medical facilities, Haldimand-Norfolk’s public health unit imposed extra restrictions on the part of Ontario that normally employs more foreign farm help than any other.
Bunkhouse accommodations with multiple kitchens and bathrooms, normally housing three dozen or so workers, were only allowed to house three during the two-week quarantine period.
Local farmers demanded this order be rescinded, arguing it left them at a disadvantage against growers elsewhere in Ontario — or even across the road, in a neighbouring county. Several got together and hired lawyers.
“It’s quite serious,” Solymár said. Despite federal financial assistance, “it just got to the point where logistically, you couldn’t bring in enough people.”
Hiring local ‘risky,’ ‘inefficient’
Some growers already have given up, Solymár said, and are plowing under dozens of acres or choosing not to cut this year.
He scoffs at those who suggest local workers could have been found. The offshore workers who return to Norfolk County year after year are trained and efficient, he said. He estimates it takes 120 locals to do the work of 60 professionals.
Temporarily laid-off local workers may be interested in farm work only until their regular jobs resume, leaving farmers in the lurch. Others might agree to work but never show up. And as long as $2,000 per month is available from the federal government as an emergency benefit, many Canadians won’t want to work more than a week or two, for fear of losing their benefits.
So far, Quebec is the only province to take the federal government up on its offer to top-up the wages of essential farm workers.
The way Solymár sees it, there are unappreciated health risks to farmers and their families in hiring local workers. An outbreak at a greenhouse in Chatham Kent started with a local worker, not with offshore help.
“A farmer that’s isolated his crew from Mexico or Jamaica has some sense of comfort that those guys are clean, that they’re not infected,” he said. With locals, “you have no idea where they’ve been, who they’ve been with, what they’ve been exposed to …”
The late spring gave growers extra time to get workers out of quarantine. But this first crop affected by the labour shortage won’t be the last. Many who pick asparagus move on to other crops later in the season, like sweet corn and apples.
On May 5, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau touted the federal government’s extr