Farmers growing for restaurants in trouble
Deniz and Ty Kanbal used to grow microgreens almost exclusively for chefs, but the two farmers are now stuck in a home cook’s world, forced to feed their expensive crop to the chickens on their property after restaurants shut down in Ontario due to the coronavirus. The Kanbals, who own D’s Greens Co., are part of a group of specialty farmers who have watched demand for their products disappear, almost overnight.
They operate a greenhouse in Niagara Falls, Ont., growing tiny, tender seedlings of vegetables and herbs — arugula, cilantro, red cabbage and purple kohlrabi — and selling them for as much as $8 per 100 grams.
But by mid-march, roughly 90 per cent of their clients were closed. Sales dropped to $2,400 in April from $20,000 in January, and are getting worse by the day through May.
“We keep questioning ourselves: ‘ Where is this going?’” Ty said, adding it won’t make financial sense to keep operating the greenhouse unless restaurants reopen soon. “To be honest, we’re just debating on shutting it down by the beginning of July.”
Some farmers have been able to switch channels and sell more produce to grocery stores, but it’s a struggle for those who grow specialty crops for the hospitality sector.
The Kanbals invested their savings to refurbish a 1,000- square- foot greenhouse last year and turn their backyard hobby into a business. They were left with dozens of kilograms of crops they couldn’t sell. The food banks took what they could; the rest became very fancy chicken feed, or compost.
“When you have a house plant die — just one plant — you’re sad,” Deniz said. “Imagine dumping trays full.”
Grocers aren’t interested in taking a risk on a new supplier right now, the Kanbals said, and frazzled grocery shoppers want to get in and get out, not linger in the produce aisle, wondering whether to give Oregon Dwarf snow pea shoots a whirl.
“Anyone who’s in the microgreen business right now, I feel sorry for them,” said Ezio Bondi of Bondi Produce, a Toronto-based wholesaler who supplies produce to Ontario restaurants.
Bondi, whose grandfather started the business, switched to providing home grocery delivery after restaurants closed in March. In the past two months, he’s watched the decimation of what he calls food service commodities: black garlic, shishito peppers, frisée lettuce and pink radicchio flown in from Italy.
“Even something common like rhubarb, that’s a hot seasonal item this time of year,” he said. “When rhubarb comes in season, everyone’s got a rhubarb dessert on their menu. Now I’m trying to sell it through home delivery, but you just realize not everyone cares. Unless you’re a hardcore foodie, you’re not going to buy rhubarb.”
Spring mix could be a problem, too. Those greens grow in six-week cycles, Bondi said. His supplier in California has to decide whether to plant next month’s crop based on current demand, or grow more and hope restaurants start reopening.
“As soon as restaurants open back up, you’re going to see a surge in demand and I don’t think our farms are going to be able to keep up,” he said.
There’s also a risk that when restaurants do reopen, likely with reduced seating capacity, they might not be able to afford rare, expensive produce.
“It’s totally possible that you might not see certain ingredients on menus for a long time,” Bondi said. “White asparagus ... Who’s going to be eating that?”
Leasa Janssen and her husband Peter have grown white asparagus in Simcoe, Ont., for 27 years. According to the Asparagus Farmers of Ontario, they are the main supplier of “whites” to restaurants in the province. It’s a tough crop to harvest: it grows underground and you have to spot it, dig in with two fingers and cut it one spear at a time.
Leasa got a call after the hospitality industry started shutting down from the man who buys and supplies her asparagus to restaurants. He was distraught. His business had dried up and he’d laid off all his staff. Without those restaurants, the Janssens had nowhere to send their crop.
“That was 90 per cent of the market,” she said. “It’s a high- end niche product, so it’s not something that can be put into a takeout meal.”
The Janssens will instead harvest at a reduced level for four weeks instead of six. They’ll only produce what they and their son can pick themselves, and serve some passionate regular customers, mostly Germans, who have bought white asparagus directly from them for as long as they’ve been growing it. Then they’ll ramp up again next year.
Leasa talked about her situation on Thursday like it was weather. She didn’t sound all that worried. She and her husband are pushing up against semi- retirement after 30 years in the business, adapting to the twists in the market, growing about 20 different crops, never to get rich.
“You kind of get a thick skin. No matter how much farmers get kicked around, we always seem to work our way out of it,” she said. “Farming is like going to the casino. You lay your money down and you cross your fingers.”