NOVEMBER 2022
CELEBRATING 143 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
THEGROWER.ORG
THE WINNING PITCH
Making the financial case for a new packing line
Would you lend money to this farm family? Turns out that Farm Credit Canada signed off on the pitch for a new packing line in record time. Installed for the 2022 season, it’s flexible enough to optically sort both peaches and apples for external and internal defects. L-R: Rich, John and father Peter Feenstra near Beamsville, Ontario. Photos by Marcella DiLonardo.
KAREN DAVIDSON Turns out that the year the Feenstra brothers John and Rich and their wives Laura and Sarah officially took over the family farm, they made their boldest move yet: investing in a new Greefa packing line that optically sorts external and internal defects for both peaches and apples. “The purchase was years in the making,” says John Feenstra, operations manager, Mountainview Orchards, Beamsville, Ontario. “There were constraints on the old packing line, parts were breaking down and the labour cost per unit was going up.” Harvest is stressful at the best of times, but all the emotion of the growing season becomes compressed – or maybe expressed! -- on the packing line. Too many small-sized fruit? Signs of scab? Bruises? The packing line exposes the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to nature’s gifts. Every apple serves as a callout to orchard management, Rich Feenstra’s domain.
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Weather patterns and cycles such as drought, temperature fluctuations as well as crop load can have a big impact on the internal qualities of apples,” says John Feenstra. “Honeycrisp apples are particularly sensitive to temperature changes. There’s not always an ideal crop load after a drought. There’s a fine balance in managing crop loads.” When it came to improving the packing line, the brothers had to crunch the numbers together to prove that purchasing expensive new equipment would provide a return on investment within an acceptable length of time. And there were many factors to consider in this process. Near the top was the ability to gather more detailed data to enable better orchard management decision-making. Also, the enhanced ability on the line to pack right-sized apples into right-sized packaging was important to support the specific needs of individual retail clients and to ensure that the exact weight was being packed into each box. The Feenstra brother’s pitch to Farm Credit Canada, the farm’s lender since 1980, described two scenarios. The
least expensive scenario proved labour reduction on a per unit basis, a major plus since labour is one of the biggest costs on the horticultural ledger. With the first bite taken, their banker went on to give them two thumbs-up on the more expensive plan. “You’ve got to have the dryer,” he said, convinced that it would eliminate a bottleneck in the old system. Father Peter Feenstra sat in on the pitch meeting but didn’t actively participate. Although he’s “sorta-kinda” retired, he still plays an important role pinch-hitting as needed. He vividly recalls that with his wife Marg, they made a farm purchase in 1980 when interest rates on operating loans were at a crippling 23 per cent. Forty years later, after endless trips to farmers’ markets and the Ontario Food Terminal, and meetings with key chain store buyers, he’s content to watch his sons make their own decisions.
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