Growers selling locally could take financial hit
We’ve got a new layer of bureaucracy for local vegetable producers and it raises some big questions about local food security.
On January 1 the BC Vegetable Marketing Commission (BCVMC for short) expanded its jurisdiction to include the northern half of British Columbia.
Prior to this, northern producers north of the 53rd parallel were technically not allowed to sell their produce to Lower Mainland markets, which affected a couple local producers, but the new rules create more regulation for local growers selling locally.
Anybody selling more than 2000 pounds or $5000 worth of vegetables will have to be registered with the marketing commission for a production and delivery allocation. This will cost producers $250 a year and some extra paperwork.
These thresholds are 40 years old and should be increased, to ease the burden on small producers, but the system needs updating in other areas as well.
The BC Vegetable Marketing Commission was established in 1934 to help maintain minimum pricing for growers to avoid damaging boom and bust cycles and limit the dumping of produce. The concept is similar to the dairy and egg marketing boards minus the hard quotas on production.
I appreciate the argument for the existence of marketing boards, although I’ve criticized how it works in practice. One of the problems is how these marketing commissions become a hammer of redtape that benefits the large multinational vertically-integrated retailers and food processors, not the local producers.
You could argue the vegetable marketing commission made sense when food production was local and the same rules applied to everyone. But nowadays a company like Costco can bring in produce from Alberta, Saskatchewan, or points beyond, grown by producers not subject to the same rules and fees as local BC producers. Same deal with American-grown produce, although these imports are regulated by federal food inspection rules.
If we want to reduce the carbon footprint of our food, it doesn’t seem like this is how you do it.
Another issue are the marketing agencies.
Marketing agencies were originally groups of farmers who came together to share the costs of advertising and marketing their produce. They are now licensed and regulated by the BC Vegetable Marketing Commission. If you want to sell vegetables to the big retailers, you need to do so through a marketing agency like BC Fresh.
Prior to February 2nd, large retailers in Prince George could sell local PG produce without going through an agency. Not that they did that much to begin with, but they now have a legal requirement to stock shelves through one of the 11 marketing agencies in the province, none of whom are local.
Presumably local producers can start a local marketing agency dedicated to local produce, like what the Okanagan and Vancouver Island have, but to start a marketing agency, the application costs $21,000, is not guaranteed to be approved by the BCVMC board, which currently has no northern representation, and would be subject to significant regulation and reporting.
Local growers are expressing a lot of concern with what is happening. Local growers have new fees they have to pay, and the opportunities to access local markets will be impacted. While some local producers will be able to sell their goods down south, without a local marketing agency, access to the big local markets will now be bogged down by more red-tape.
I’m not sure our local food security and local farmers are going to all benefit from this new arrangement, but it’s not like we have any say in the matter absent more regional autonomy over our local food security and independence.