Where are the good things grown in Ontario?

Wed, March 12, 2008
By HANK DANISZEWSKI, SUN MEDIA

The slogan is Good things Grow in Ontario.

But finding those good Ontario-grown products in your supermarket is getting tougher.

The rising value of the Canadian dollar means food manufacturers find it easier to go global when they buy and process products.

It’s a trend that threatens the 752,000 people in Ontario’s agriculture and food-processing sector, the second-largest employer in the province.

The latest victims are about 150 fruit farmers who grow peaches and pears for canning in a long band along the north shore of Lake Erie including Elgin, Norfolk Counties and Chatham-Kent.

The processing plant in the Niagara peninsula that buys their fruit will close at the end of the month along with a vegetable processing plant in Exeter.

Both plants are operated by CanGro Foods Inc, the people behind familiar labels of Aylmer and DelMonte. The Aylmer brand got its name from its roots in the Elgin County town.

Tony and Debbie Haegens, who farm near Long Point, planted 40 acres of clingstone peach trees in 2004 to supply the CanGro fruit plant.

The plant is the only viable market for the peaches so the Haegens will likely end up tearing out 7,000 trees.

Haegens said Ontario crops are disappearing and Ontario consumers are losing the choice to buy local.

“We thought we had a contract to sell our fruit. They come in and buy the company and the label and put some other product in it - that’s not right,” said Debbie Haegens.

CanGro has said in a release they will “shift to outsourcing canned vegetable and fruit requirements.” CanGro was purchased from Kraft Foods two years ago by Florida-based Sun Capital Partners.

CanGro officials could not be reached for more information on where they will buy their fruits and vegetables but the shift is already obvious in grocery stores.

A can of DelMonte peaches bears the Product of Canada label but the pears are marked Product of China.

It’s a familiar story for John McGuigan, a farmer from the Cedar Springs area of Chatham-Kent who also grows clingstone peaches for the Cangro plant.

Over the years he has sold cucumbers, spanish onions, and cauliflower to Ontario processing plants only to lose those markets when the companies decided to import produce from growers as far away as Oregon, Romania and China.

His strawberry crop has shrunk from 50 acres to five because of cheap imports from California.

McGuigan will be left with no customer for his peaches in Ontario and only a slim chance of selling to a processor in Michigan.

McGuigan said it is foolish for Ontario to become so dependent on imported food.

He said borders could be shut down by a terrorist attack or a disease epidemic. It also makes little sense from an environmental point of views

“If you’re hauling it from halfway around the world you’re burning up a lot of fuel,” he said.

Adrian Huisman, manager of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers’ Marketing Board said imports from China, Greece or South Africa are displacing Ontario processing peaches.

He said Ontario recently lost a grape juice plant and a maraschino cherry processing plant.

Huisman said companies like CanGro will hang on to their labels, because they are well-established in consumer markets, even if the contents in the can come all over the globe.

“For CanGro to keep the labels, they must see the value and what they stand for. Without those labels I don’t believe they would have a market,” he said.

The labels may survive but the Ontario producers may not.

“‘The processors can react to change and move production, the processors can’t,” sadi Huisman.

In the case of CanGro’s Exeter plant, Jim Reith, chairman of the Ontario Processed Vegetable growers said there is still hope that a new buyer will step in and save the century-old plant. The century-old plant employs about 140 people.

Reith said the closure of plant will affect many growers in the area who supplied it with peas and sweet corn. But unlike the fruit growers, they can more easily switch to another crop such as dry beans which are now surging in price along with other grains and oilseeds.

“In a sense it could not have happened at a better time . . . In a sense the growers are almost liberated by this,” said Reith, who farms in Middlesex County.

But he said in the longer term the growers will miss the alternate market that the Exeter plant provided.

Ray Bromley of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union said employees of Ontario processing plants are also the losers.

He is trying to negotiate a severance package for about 130 unionized workers at the Exeter plant.

But he said the larger issue is the crumbling of the Canadian food industry with the loss or crops and processing plants.

He said consumers are concerned with the source and safety of their food.

“When it comes to food it should be one part of our life that should be somewhat sacred. We are importing products without really knowing the contents.”

Bromley believes most consumers would prefer to support local producers and plants but probably do not realize the industry is slipping away.

“The public is absolutely fooled by this and I don’t know when we are going to wake up and support the farmer and Canadian industry.”

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Hank Daniszewski is a Free Press business reporter.

Source: The London Free Press