JULY 2025
CELEBRATING 146 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
THEGROWER.ORG
CLIMATE SHOCKS
New ministers, new demands. Same old solutions?
Hon. Trevor Jones, Ontario’s agriculture, food and agribusiness minister, is gathering input from farmers and their associations prior to the federal-provincial-territorial (FPT) meeting of his colleagues in Winnipeg from July 16-18. Business risk management programs will be on the agenda. Here, he’s pictured in the centre, between apple grower Keith Wright (right) and son David (left). They’re demonstrating the value of hail netting in their orchard near Harrow, Ontario. Photos by Dax Melmer.
KAREN DAVIDSON Atmospheric rivers. Heat domes. Polar vortexes. The increasing prevalence of extreme conditions on top of traditional worries like early frost and hailstorms are driving growers to extreme counter measures to manage weather risk. Look at Keith Wright and his son David, farming near Harrow, Ontario. On July 1, 2021, hail hammered the tender fruitlets on their apple crop. The cuts to the fruitlets resulted in misshapen, unmarketable fruit. “The damage was so bad that 90 per cent of the crop was lost,” Wright recalls. After scouting various systems, they installed Whailex single-row, hail netting for four acres of their high-value Gala apples. Since then, they have warded off subsequent
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storm damage. Wright’s post-purchase satisfaction was fleeting though. His crop insurer refused to lower premiums despite a significant investment that directly reduces future crop loss claims from hail damage. Wright had the opportunity to share his frustration firsthand with the Hon. Trevor Jones, Ontario’s new minister of agriculture, food and agribusiness, who dropped by the farm for a chat in early June. Together, they inspected the hail netting system. Most risks aren’t solved with netting, however, so growers are glad that business risk management is expected to be high on the agenda when federalprovincial-territorial (FPT) agriculture ministers meet in Winnipeg July 16-18. Minister Jones is one of five new provincial agriculture ministers who will be at the table, along with the new federal agriculture minister Heath MacDonald. These new dynamics provide fertile ground
Farm business management PG 12 @growernews
for the much-needed reset of current policy. Farmer groups across the country insist this can’t wait until 2028, the start of the next five-year Business Risk Management (BRM) suite which encompasses AgriStability, AgriInsurance, AgriRecovery and Advanced Payments. One of these groups, the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA), has underscored the importance of improving the AgriStability Program, seeking to restore the reference margin trigger level to 85 per cent. The Association has also asked the federal government to increase the payment cap to $6 million and the compensation rate to 90 per cent. In light of the ongoing trend to larger-sized farms and the bite of tariffdriven inflation, the existing cap of $3 million per farm per year is now proving to be too low. Continued on page 3
Minor use priorities
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