Disastrous season for Quebec fruits and vegetables

2023-08-04 11:26:13

Fewer Quebec fruits and vegetables are offered to consumers this summer, according to the Association of Quebec Market Gardeners (APMQ): harvests are catastrophic due to extreme weather conditions. The APMQ will also hold a press conference on Friday alongside the Union des producteurs agricole and other producer associations to demand government support for farmers.

At this time of year, the cold stores at Place des producteurs, the largest wholesale fruit and vegetable market in eastern Canada, should be 85% to 90% full, according to the general manager of the QPAM. However, Patrice Léger Bourgoin notes that their utilization rate currently varies between 30% and 75%.

“The volume of lettuce available is lower than usual. Beets are going to be a problem, because there aren’t many of them. Watermelon, the season is not going very well; those who find melon from Quebec right now should keep them. There are several destroyed garlic fields,” reports Mr. Léger Bourgoin.

The main culprits are extreme heat, torrential rains and high winds. Late frosts in June also caused problems. Storms also flooded fields, explains Mr. Léger Bourgoin. Lettuce leaves are destroyed; root vegetables rot; field operations are slowed down as tractors sink, causing weeds to proliferate or preventing farmers from harvesting their crops on time.

“An onion, celery and lettuce grower saw his first harvest swept away by water, then by a tornado. He sowed again and he lost his other crop,” he says. The two most affected regions are Montérégie and Lanaudière, according to Mr. Léger Bourgoin.

For fruit and vegetable wholesaler Canadawide, located in Montreal, supply this summer is more complicated than ever, reports its senior vice-president of business development, Chris Sarantis. For the moment, he says he has managed to obtain a large enough volume to meet Quebec demand, but he expects to run out of certain products, including lettuces, in the coming weeks. Mr. Sarantis also sees a link between the crop losses of market gardeners and the slightly higher prices he has to pay this year.

A necessary adaptation

Despite everything, the public markets of Montreal are full of fruits and vegetables, assures the general manager of the company that manages them, Nicolas Fabien-Ouellet. What saves them is that they do business with a wide variety of merchants from different regions, who themselves have a diversified production. “If they lose a harvest, they can make up for it later with other productions,” says Fabien-Ouellet.

The situation is similar in most public markets in Quebec, according to their association.

Angelica Alberti-Dufort, research and knowledge transfer specialist for the climate change consortium Ouranos, also believes that diversification is a way for farmers to increase their resilience. It recalls that extreme weather events, which have consequences for crops, are expected to be more and more frequent.

M^me Alberti-Dufort stresses that solutions for adapting to climate change can be put in place. “For extreme rains, we can protect the soil from torrential rains so that there is not too much erosion and the soils are leached of their good nutrients”, she gave as an example.

Moreover, the QPAM is calling for a Quebec strategy that would help the agricultural community adapt to climate change. Patrice Léger Bourgoin also believes that the harvest insurance of the Financière agricole du Québec, whose objective is to compensate entrepreneurs for the loss of crops due to uncontrollable natural phenomena, is no longer adapted to current and future climatic conditions. According to him, many producers will only get a small amount of compensation this year, despite the significant destruction of their livelihood.