Apple prices hit a new low yesterday: 12 cents a pound. The B.C. Fruit Growers Association brought the bargain-basement deal to the James Bay Community Market yesterday morning to make a point: That's what they get paid and if it doesn't change they can't survive.
Association members rushed back and forth to a waiting truck to keep the tables stocked as market customers rifled through bins of apples for the best picks. At roughly one-tenth of supermarket prices, the apples didn't last long. By early afternoon, customers had walked off with all 3,400 kilograms of them.
One-tenth the supermarket price is about what B.C.'s farmers earned for last year's crop, the second bad year in a row. Joe Sardinha, president of the association, said he's already seen apple acreage shrink in the Okanagan Valley and more of the same could threaten the industry.
"Too many years like this and you have a lot of people wondering what they're going to do," he said. "We need a certain critical mass [of farmers] to remain competitive and remain a viable supply to the retail trade. It's a big concern." Sardinha, a second-generation farmer from Summerland, said prices have suffered from subsidized competition out of Washington state and a strong Canadian dollar.
The shrinking number of major retail buyers is a third reason. The consolidation of retail chains has meant that where 10 or more major buyers vied for B.C.'s produce a decade ago, now there are only four or five, Sardinha said.
The association went on the road with cut-rate apples to drive home its concern, stopping first in Kelowna and Abbotsford, before coming to Victoria.
Dressed in a yellow T-shirt with the slogan "farms feed cities," Sardinha pointed across the road to the legislature, saying the government could take steps to help.
"We just went through the Olympics and it was all about creating opportunities and that. Well, I'd like to see some opportunities created post-Olympics." At the top of his list would be a program of in-province procurement for B.C. Ferries and hospitals.
Carefully selecting her take from the bins of apples, Sharon Whalen said she can sympathize. She grew up in Ontario, where her uncle was an apple farmer.
"I used to go to market with him on Saturdays," she said. "The lifestyle is very honourable. And the apples are good as well." Sardinha hopes more customers like Whalen will demand B.C. produce. That, he said, is the best way to make sure farmers get a larger cut.
