JULY 2024
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CLIMATE EXTREMES
Fruitless in the Okanagan
Sukhdeep Brar, a second-generation cherry, peach and apple grower, is learning another skill: standing up for his tree fruit industry in the face of climate change. Battered by several years of extreme weather, Brar is helping to rally the 180 members of the BC Fruit Growers’ Association as its vice-president. Their quest is for more financial assistance from the provincial government. This fall photo captures him in his Summerland BC apple orchard. Photo courtesy of Jeff Bassett.
KAREN DAVIDSON What’s in 15 minutes of fame? The recent “Stronger Together” farmer rally in Osoyoos, British Columbia aims to find out. Fruit farmers, reeling from four years of weather extremes, conceived the pro-agriculture May 28th event to create TV and print headlines in the Lower Mainland. A worthwhile result would be low-interest loans or cash injections by the provincial government. Although the event coincided with Premier David Eby’s cabinet retreat in the southern Okanagan, and he gave interviews on the event sidelines, there’s no immediate cash relief addressing the January 2024 deep freeze that decimated grapes and tree fruits. “I’m very worried about the toll that the last few years is taking on farmers,” says Sukhdeep Brar, vice-president, BC Fruit Growers’ Association (BCFGA). “I am worried about mental health in an industry that doesn’t like to talk
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about mental health. Remember that 70 per cent of our members are Indo-Canadian. I am worried about the number of orchards going up for sale. I’m worried that there’s not a future in the Okanagan for my kids.” The 38-year-old, second-generation farmer tends to 125 acres of cherries, peaches, apples and pears near Summerland, BC – also home, coincidentally, to an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research station and cherry breeding programs that have put BC on the global map. Brar points out that farmers have endured a heat dome of +40°C in 2021 and a deep freeze of -28°C in 2024. Fruit trees can only withstand so much adversity, before completely shutting down basic functions. While the provincial government’s announcement of a five-year, $70 million, enhanced replant program is appreciated, it’s not a realistic bridge to next year… or the year after. “I’m not surprised that the BCFGA has rallied its members,” says Marcus Janzen, an Abbotsford, BC greenhouse grower and president of the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada (FVGC). “Those members have a
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long history of political engagement. Their rally is an expression of desperate times and how hard pressed they are to see a way forward.” Looking at the Canadian situation more broadly, Janzen adds, “Climate policy and food security need to be in lockstep. Everything pivots on that. Europe is starting to realize that. North America is not immune to those realities.” In British Columbia, the Agricultural Land Reserve, a concept put into law in 1973, protects thousands of acres of farmland. But modern agricultural buildings, whether outbuildings, greenhouses, or produce packing facilities, no longer match consumers’ collective memory of red barns and cattle grazing in the distance. The disconnect between city and agrarian communities continues to widen, offering most urbanites little real understanding of what’s at stake for Canadian food security.
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