Will the next Canadian agricultural technological revolution focus on yield or taste? According to Tyler Whale, president of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, an organization focused on technological development in food and agriculture, Canada’s farm and food sector must consider more than yield, stress tolerance, and other production factors to stay competitive and relevant to market demands. […] Read more
Tag Archives Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers
Canadian agriculture needs technology to innovate
Next innovators will need to look beyond yield and to what consumers are demanding
Former OMAFRA manager appointed OPVG chair
Dave Hope succeeds Suzanne van Bommel as appointed chair of the processing vegetable board
Dave Hope has been named as the new chair of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG) board. Hope succeeds Suzanne van Bommel in the position after van Bommel’s recent resignation. Hope is a retired assistant deputy minister of OMAFRA, and a former mixed livestock farmer. He was raised on an eighth-generation farm in Ontario, said […] Read more
Van Bommel resigns as processing vegetable growers board chair
To take on a role with the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission
Suzanne van Bommel has resigned her role as chair of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers. Van Bommel was appointed chair after the province’s administrator turned control of the OPVG back to a grower board made up of half elected and half appointed members. The board will be fully elected by growers after the organization’s annual […] Read more
Processing vegetable growers elections contentious
Some growers at a district meeting of the organization walked out, but returned in time to vote
Ontario’s processing vegetable growers are pushing back against the provincial government’s takeover of their association’s board of directors in 2016. Resolutions coming to the annual meeting of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG) include ones calling for the replacement of the members of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission and for an investigation into cancellation […] Read more
New pickle plant coming to Wallaceburg
Whyte’s Foods will create 100 jobs and use Ontario cucumbers and peppers in a refurbished plant
Pickles will once again be processed in Ontario. A large crowd of farmers, politicians, community members and local officials gathered in Wallaceburg on Aug. 23 to hear representatives from Whyte’s Foods Inc. – a large Canadian pickled vegetables company based in Quebec – announce plans to create a new pepper and cucumber processing facility in […] Read more
Processing vegetable contract compromise reached
The Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers marketing board believes it has found a compromise to an imposed regulation that would have gutted grower contract protection. Why it matters: Farmers had contract security of two years previously, but new regulations would have taken that to none and processors could have dropped growers whenever they wished. The matter […] Read more
Chair, directors named for Ontario vegetable board
The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has named a new chair and four directors for the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers board, with another four directors to be elected by growers this week. Suzanne van Bommel, a farm co-owner with a long history of work in the agriculture sector, has been appointed chair. The province dismissed […] Read more
Ontario redrafts vegetable grower organization governance
Ontario’s Farm Products Marketing Commission (OFPMC) is proposing a new governance structure for the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers, which has been without a board of directors since March. The commission last week released proposed amendments to provincial Regulations 441 and 400, which would set up an eight-member OPVG board with an OFPMC-appointed chair. The amendments […] Read more
Ontario names trustee to break tomato impasse
The Ontario government has appointed a trustee to assume the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers’ power to negotiate 2017 contracts with processors for the growing of processing tomatoes in the province. The board of directors of the marketing board has been dismissed until new elections are held, as expected by the end of 2017. “I have […] Read more
Ontario tomato processors cancel orders for spring
Retaliating in a dispute with what they call a “growers’ cartel,” two of Ontario’s major commercial tomato processors say they won’t contract with tomato seedling producers for this spring’s crop. Sun-Brite Foods and Highbury Canco, which describe themselves as two of the three biggest tomato processors in the province, said Wednesday their cutback in orders […] Read more