“I’m very proud,” he said during a ceremony on May 31, marking the family’s partnership with Ontario Farmland Trust. “I am the happiest man in the world.”

In 2022, he connected with Martin Straathof, Ontario Farmland Trust’s executive director, to investigate the two-year process of placing his Clarington, Ont. farm in a 999-year easement, which would designate the land as agricultural use only.

Why it matters: Farmland trusts keep productive land affordable and protected against development, creating foodbelt preserves on an individual farm-by-farm basis.

“I’m not against development, but they need to be smart about it,” said the sixth-generation farmer. “In Ontario, we have half of the class one land in all of Canada. It’s mostly in the Golden Horseshoe, which we are here, and it’s being gobbled up faster than you can see.”

Stevens’ farm operation, Wilmot Orchard, is a microclimate that allows for the growth of 11 varieties of blueberries and several varieties of apple trees. The rapid development around their Durham Region area heightened the importance of preserving farmland, and he hopes their participation in the initiative inspires other farmers to consider similar measures.

He also examined the long-term implications of developer pressures on land prices and the ability of young farmers to purchase land, particularly in areas where urban-rural integration had intensified.

“The only way a young farmer in this area is going to be able to buy a piece of land is if it is put into the trust because then it has no development value,” explained the sixth-generation farmer. “Hopefully, other people in the area catch on to this, and maybe someday, there may be another piece of property these young people can afford to buy at farm prices.”

By placing his land in a trust, it will be priced according to the agricultural land value rather than inflated developer prices, where Stevens said landowners are often offered 10 times the value of the land for residential or industrial use.

It also highlights the challenge of succession planning and the need for young people to see the value in farming, said Judi Stevens, Charles’ wife and farm co-founder.

Placing an easement on farmland alone won’t bolster the agriculture sector or make it sustainable, Judi explained; you must cultivate a drive and desire in young people to farm.

“Even if they (older farmers) do put the land into a farmland trust,” she explained, “there has to be enough awareness and enough interest in young people or other people to want to buy a farm.”

As it stands, many farm youths are opting for city careers, leaving farmland and farmers, who are ready to retire, vulnerable to the pull of developer per-acre pricing.

Margaret Walton, chair of Ontario Farmland Trust, is a leading expert in agricultural planning, with over three decades of experience in developing planning policies that support agricultural sectors in areas subject to urban growth pressures.

“Despite the work that we’ve done, it’s quite clear that strong planning policies are not enough,” said Walton. “We need to have other mechanisms for making sure that what we have is protected into the future.”

With the addition of Stevens’ 164 acres, the Ontario Farmland Trust now has 2,700 easement-protected acres provincially, with a goal of reaching 10,000 protected acres by 2029.

“You can’t think about the dollars and cents of it (placing land in trust) because if you do, you probably will never do this,” said Charles. “But as I say, I’ve never seen anybody take even one dollar to their coffin and been able to use it.”

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Production Lareault, based on just over 450 acres at Lavaltrie, Que. — about 40 km northeast of Montreal, in the province’s Lanaudiere region — has been acquired by investors Antoine Casimir and Andrea Borodenko for an undisclosed sum.

The Lareault business produces multiple varieties of early-, mid- and late-season strawberry plants for commercial-scale, greenhouse and U-pick growers and garden centres as well as for backyard and balcony use.

The company also sells various varieties of raspberry, high- and lowbush blueberry, blackberry, cherry, haskap and other berry plants as well as asparagus and rhubarb, among others.

Owner/operators Luc and Lyne Lareault plan to retire from the business that’s been in family hands since 1953.

Casimir and Borodenko are the husband-and-wife operators of Greenlore, a Montreal venture capital and private equity firm with a focus on businesses in the agriculture, food and e-commerce sectors that are seeking partnerships for their growth or succession-planning phases.

Casimir was also previously a principal in Quebec private equity firm Novacap, with a focus on companies seeking either growth or exit strategies, while Borodenko previously worked for Montreal digital marketing firm Mediative.

The acquisition was backed with loans from Quebec pension fund Fonds de solidarite FTQ, financial co-operative Desjardins Group and Farm Credit Canada (FCC).

“The support of our financial partners was crucial to the deal’s success and to keeping the head office in Quebec,” Casimir and Borodenko said jointly in Thursday’s release.

“We are also delighted that all the employees will remain and that we can count on the support of Luc and Lyne Lareault to facilitate the transition,” they said. “Lareault is an excellent platform for our future projects, which will leverage the company’s enviable reputation for quality and innovation.”

Business transfers are a “major challenge” for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Fonds de solidarite FTQ CEO Janie C. Beique said in the same release, adding that “solutions exist for entrepreneurs who want to ensure the future of the company they’ve built and for buyers who want to contribute to our local economy.”

Desjardins vice-president Jean-Yves Bourgeois, in the same release, described the deal as
“excellent news for the agri-food sector,” adding that “a good plan, developed well in advance, helps owners anticipate how they will transfer the business to the next generation. But beyond purely financial matters, buyers and sellers need to be guided on a human level during this critical period.”

Luc Lareault, who will remain with the company through the transition, described the new owners as “dynamic Quebecers who know the market very well” and have “several meaningful projects in mind for the future.”

— Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Charles Stevens bought Wilmot Orchards in 1975, a year before he graduated from the University of Guelph with a Bachelor of Science, when he planned a future of apple growing.

When he and his wife, Judi, considered cultivating blueberries, a government soil test said it was impossible. That spurred them to prove it wrong.

Why it matters: Wilmot Orchards is on track to be Ontario’s largest blueberry grower, with 37 acres of blueberries by 2024.

“There were nine or 10 different varieties when I started that were somewhat adaptable to this climate,” said Stevens. “We were not perfect, but we adapted our methods of doing it so that we were actually economical.”

In 1979, Stevens planted the first acre and a half, and four years later, Wilmot Orchard opened pick-your-own blueberries to the public. Now, 11 varieties are available to meet demand and market as products in the on-farm Appleberries Café.

“This summer season, we saw 30,000 guests come through here to pick blueberries and enjoy our café,” said Stevens’s daughter, Courtney. “Thirty-thousand people pick a lot of blueberries in about a month.”

She oversees the café and social media marketing for Wilmot Orchards and said consumer demographics and needs have changed significantly in her lifetime.

Initially, older Eastern Europeans dominated sales. Now, they cater primarily to young Asian families who want larger berries.

“The bigger, the better,” Courtney said with a laugh. “But each variety has slightly different flavours, different ripening times, and slightly different sizes.”

Generally speaking, early berries are more tart and late varieties are sweeter but can also be smaller and less appealing to the modern-day consumer.

The operation is slowly transitioning out of Jersey, a late-season variety with a small berry, in favour of newer types like Valour and Bonus, with a larger berry.

“(Jerseys) is our smallest variety, and we have people that flatly refuse to pick them,” said Courtney.

“(Valour and Bonus) are the same time frame but much bigger. People have been thrilled with them. One of their berries is over an inch.”

Demand for blueberries continues to grow, she said. Being touted in mainstream media as a “superfood” created a distinct increase in sales, prompting the farm to expand Appleberries Café and incorporate the falconry bird-hazing program into an agri-tourism draw.

Judi launched the farm stand-style cafe in 1994, baking all the products in their kitchen. In 2003, it opened as a brick-and-mortar shop snuggled between blueberry patches and expanded to include ice cream and an assortment of jams, sauces and blueberry coffee.

“The volume of people has really changed and pushed us to keep expanding,” said Courtney.

In 2022, it added an indoor dining facility, which expanded Wilmot Orchard’s ability to provide seasonal customers with a place to enjoy cafe purchases and host special events, including a Farm and Food Care Ontario tour in early October.

“We’re breaking into events like this, as well as supper clubs where we bring in chefs from downtown Toronto and do a multi-course dinner,” Courtney told FFCO tour participants.

“The only requirement for them is they must use our blueberries or blueberry products in each course.”

The first supper club ran in May with fantastic uptake and response, so they added another in early October.

Stevens said an unexpected 10-minute hailstorm on Sept. 18 caused significant damage to the 150-acre apple orchard.

“We had roughly eight per cent of our crop harvested by that time,” he said. “The rest of it got 87 per cent damage from hail, which has never ever happened at that time of year. Ever.”

In 45 years, Stevens has lost four crops to hail, but never this late in the year. He said hackers shut down the Weather Network the day before. A too-tight timeline to fire up the hail cannon contributed to losses.
Still, events like this drive home the importance of diversification.

“If we didn’t have blueberries, we really would be in a pickle,” said Stevens, adding it won’t cover the apple losses, but it helps. “That’s being self-insured with diversification.”

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