Fruit growers across the province are now left to pick up the pieces after the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative announced its sudden closure Friday in a letter to members.
Effective immediately, the cooperative is no longer receiving fruit, and growers are being advised to search for alternatives to market their fruit for the rest of the season.
“On July 25, 2024, the Board of Directors determined that due to extremely low estimated fruit volumes and difficult market conditions, the cooperative would not be able to effectively operate the business and provide pool returns to growers,” the cooperative said in the letter.
“BC Tree Fruits Cooperative and all its subsidiaries are taking steps to obtain court direction and assistance to properly wind down the Cooperative to maximize recovery for all stakeholders.”
BC United Party agriculture critic Ian Paton tells CityNews he was taken aback when he learned of the closure Friday.
“It was shocking for the fact that I’ve spent so much time as the agriculture critic for BC United in the area of Kelowna, Okanagan Falls, Oliver, Osoyoos, dealing with the issues that these poor farmers have faced over the last three or four years, with different situations, with the weather and climate and freezing and heat domes and things like that,” he said.
“The only thing I can say is I just feel a lot of sympathy for for these farmers and what they’ve gone through, and now it’s come to this that they’re scrambling to find a place to market their fruit this summer.”
Paton says the closure of the cooperative will mean less B.C. fruit available in grocery stores, exacerbating a pre-existing shortage caused by a cold snap in January. This will mean an increased reliance on imported fruit to meet consumer needs, he says.
“We’re going to see fewer apples, peaches, apricots, cherries, different things like that are going to be available that are grown here and processed in British Columbia,” he said.
“So we’re going to be looking for our fruit products, probably, to come up from South America, Mexico, or parts of California and even Washington State or Oregon.”
Paton says growers will be looking to find alternatives to the cooperative in the coming days.
“So now there’s a mad scramble for these tree fruit farmers to figure out where they can send their product to get processed, packaged, and shipped out and get some sort of a paycheck,” he said.
“We’ve got days coming forward trying to figure out where this is going to happen and where the markets are going to be.”
With files from David Nadalini.