Suzanne van Bommel, a farm co-owner with a long history of work in the agriculture sector, has been appointed chair.

The province dismissed the previous board of directors and chair in March when negotiations over 2017 processing tomato contracts stalled. A trustee, former provincial agriculture minister Elmer Buchanan, dismissed senior staff and has run the board since then.

Buchanan is stepping back with the appointment of a new general manager, Cathy Lennon, and the creation of the new board.

Van Bommel also has long-term ties to Ontario’s governing Liberals, serving as chief of staff to former agriculture minister Steve Peters. She is from near Belmont, Ont., has also been a federal Liberal election candidate and worked in the renewable fuels industry.

Van Bommel today is president of the GPS Group, a government relations firm providing public relations and issues management services within the agriculture, food and energy sectors. She and her family also produce corn, soybeans and peas on their 560-acre farm, and she manages a hog finishing operation.

As OPVG chair, she has been appointed for a two-year term, with the potential for reappointment up to 10 years.

The province has also appointed four other growers, all with extensive experience in processing vegetable production, to the board. They were selected by the Farm Products Marketing Commission after a public call for applications for directors.

The four were appointed for one-year terms and their positions will be filled in grower elections next year.

They include:

• Eric Allaer, Port Lambton, who grows tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, seed corn, field corn, soybeans and wheat on 3,500 acres. He has farmed for 33 years and is a turkey producer.
• Michael Denys, Wallaceburg, who has farmed for 41 years and operates 300 acres with his son producing sweet corn, seed corn, green beans, peas, soybean and wheat.
• Tom Hebblethwaite, Blenheim, who has farmed for 42 years and runs 1000 acres with his son, producing tomatoes, corn, seed corn, soybeans and wheat.
• Chris Stewart, Cedar Springs, with 35 years of farming experience, growing tomatoes, seed corn, soybeans and wheat on 1,500 acres.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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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 are up for public comment until July 31.

Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal dismissed the OPVG’s directors in March when an impasse to a new contract between tomato growers and the main processors in the province could not be broken.

Leal then appointed former ag minister Elmer Buchanan as a trustee to assume the association’s power to negotiate contracts with processors for processing tomatoes for 2017.

Under the commission’s proposal as posted June 15, the first new OPVG board wouldn’t be formed until this fall. Four board members would be elected at that time for two-year terms, and would sit with four commission-appointed members holding one-year terms.

In 2018, the commission said, the terms of the four appointed members would end and their replacements would be elected for two-year terms, and the four members elected in 2017 would continue their terms for their second year.

“At the election in 2018, all board positions, with the exception of the appointed chair, would be transitioned to elected positions,” the commission said.

The eight members would eventually be elected from the OPVG’s three existing district committees, with four members coming from District 1 and two from each of Districts 2 and 3. The board would need a majority of members present to hold votes, and the chair would cast a tie-breaking vote if need be.

Instead of only being able to elect members to the district vegetable growers’ committees, growers would be able to elect anyone from their district directly to the board through an anonymous election process, the commission proposes.

Members would serve two-year terms, staggered so half of the board members would be elected each year, with the other half elected in the following year.

The new OPVG chair would be appointed by the commission for an initial term of two years and eligible for reappointment, up to a total term limit of 10 years. The amendments also lay out new limits on consecutive terms of service and lifetime service for board members.

The Processing Vegetable Growers’ Alliance, a grower group formed after the OPVG board was dismissed, said Thursday in a letter it has “very serious concerns about the proposed amendments that would effectively allow the government to take control of the OPVG board for another year.”

The OPVG, the PVGA said, “currently has no expert advisory staff or board, and is operated by a commission-appointed trustee.”

The PVGA said the commission’s proposed amendments “will put the voice of the processing growers at a minority, with government appointees making up the majority of the OPVG board until the end of 2018.”

The processing vegetable sector, the PVGA said, is “best served by the grassroots growers who produce the 14 different processing vegetables grown in Ontario. And a fully elected grower board is in the best position to accurately and adequately represent our sector.”

The PVGA, describing the province’s processing vegetable growers as having been “silenced” for almost four months, urged growers to comment on the proposed amendments before the deadline.

The alliance said its goal is “to restore a fully elected OPVG board with the authority to negotiate prices, terms, conditions and contracts for Ontario’s processing vegetable growers.” — AGCanada.com Network

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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 been closely monitoring the 2017 contract negotiations between Ontario’s tomato growers and processors and was recently informed by growers, processors and the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission (OFPMC) that negotiations have reached an impasse, jeopardizing this year’s crop season,” provincial Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal said.

“Risking this year’s tomato crop, and the thousands of jobs that support it, is something I am not prepared to do.”

Former Ontario agriculture minister Elmer Buchanan is the trustee and he will assume the powers of the board to negotiate a contract for the 2017 growing season.

Buchanan was, until recently, vice-chair of the OFMPC, the arm’s-length body that regulates agriculture organizations and marketing boards in the province.

He will hold the powers of the board until new board elections are held.

The former chair of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG) board is calling for a quick new vote for a new board of directors.

Francis Dobbelaar, who farms near Wallaceburg, about 40 km south of Sarnia, said the board is democratically elected, and he believes it had the support of growers.

However, he expects Buchanan will appoint negotiators for processing tomato contracts.

“For all the wrong reasons the government is stepping in to make this decision. Obviously rural Ontario is not any concern and this is the tip of the iceberg.

“So much damage can be done to the industry in the short term. There will be contracts signed and all will be signed under duress,” he said, referring to the fact that farmers will have to negotiate independently with processors and will already have inputs and equipment bought for 2017 and beyond.

The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Processors Association (OFVPA), meanwhile, hailed Leal’s move in a separate statement Friday.

“We look forward to working jointly with the OPVG, their appointed trustee, and our grower partners in putting together the details for this progressive move,” OFPVA president Steve Lamoure said.

Don Epp, OFVPA’s executive director, described the move as “a great opportunity to increase employment, economic investment, and grower tonnage. Working together truly works.”

The impasse is not surprising, as Leal quashed an OFPMC attempt to change the way that processing tomato contracts are negotiated, after an outcry from growers about the loss of power and the need for more consultation.

Contracts for all processing tomato growers are currently negotiated by the marketing board. That gave farmers the power to collectively bargain for price and conditions. If there’s no agreement, both sides submit a proposal to an arbitrator who makes one submitted price, or the other.

Processors have been looking to be able to negotiate directly with farmers, and the proposed OFPMC regulation would have given them that, by making the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers a producer association without negotiating powers.

The processors issued a statement early in 2017 in which they said that without regulatory changes they would not be negotiating contracts for the 2017 growing season.

In August, Minister Leal put a halt to the OFPMC process citing the need for greater study and industry consultation before making such a significant change in how tomatoes are marketed in the province.

In a statement Friday he said his actions remain within the spirit of his directive in August to “develop a regulatory framework to achieve reform for the 2018 growing season and beyond.”

Dobbelaar said the OPVG had a report by independent consultant John Groenewegen, ready to be released next Wednesday, showing the competitiveness of the industry. Government already had seen that report. Dobbelaar didn’t know what would happen to the report now that a trustee is running the board.

The board had already negotiated contracts for processing crops such as sweet corn, carrots, onions and cucumbers for 2017, Dobbelaar said. It was negotiating with Sunbrite and ConAgra, when the two processors didn’t show up for a final day of negotiations on March 1.

“It signified there was a political change,” he said.

Highbury Canco (HCC) has been the largest push behind changes, Dobbelaar said. HCC was seen as the saviour of the former Heinz tomato processing plant in Leamington, but has significantly cut wages and costs and now Dobbelaar said it is going after the price it pays to farmers.

“One particular company, HCC, didn’t like the rules, so they tipped the tables in their favour,” he said.

The way the processing vegetable marketing board has been treated should be a warning to other agriculture boards, he said.

He also blames the high cost of doing business in Ontario, especially electricity costs, as a reason for processors to push the need for savings down to farmers.

“We had a good system, but the political optics weren’t just proper,” he said. “When the dust clears and the real truth comes out, the government will have made a big mistake.”

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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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 “will be felt first among seedling producers who normally receive contracts in February and early March.”

The processors, in a release from the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Processors Association (OFVPA), said they won’t sign contracts “until the recommendations of the province’s independent Farm Products Marketing Commission are implemented.”

The commission in February had proposed to amend Regulation 440, which sets out the process for negotiations, establishment of negotiating agencies and appointments of representatives to said agencies for the marketing of vegetables for processing.

The commission said at the time it had met with vegetable processors and found those companies would rather negotiate “with their own active growers” of a given vegetable.

The commission proposed to take out 440’s provisions on establishing negotiating agencies and put in provisions establishing an industry advisory committee.

The commission’s plan would set out “minimum requirements for active growers of each processor to be participants of the negotiating agency for each vegetable.”

By comparison, the current rule allows Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG) and the OFVPA to name up to 10 appointees to each negotiation agency.

OPVG, with support from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, protested against the commission’s proposal.

The grower group said at the time its board doesn’t believe “changes to a democratic process should occur as a result of concerns expressed by processors or even by a relatively small number of growers.”

Provincial Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal stepped into the fray in August, telling the commission that “concerns have been raised about an apparent lack of both adequate and sufficient information and consultation with interested parties.”

Leal instead directed the commission to “develop a plan for engagement and consultation with interested parties and stakeholders concerning any proposed amendments to the regulatory framework for the vegetables-for-processing industry.”

The Farm Products Marketing Commission had said in February it planned to have its proposed changes in place for use by the industry when negotiating agreements for 2017’s processing vegetable crops.

“After years of thorough review, the commission recognized that the way that vegetables are marketed in Ontario needed to change,” Highbury Canco CEO Sam Diab said in Wednesday’s release. “This was not an easy decision.”

Talks with seedling producers have already wrapped up with no increase in price over the term of the contract, the processors said Wednesday. However, they added, individual processors “determine quantities and initiate orders.”

OFVPA president Karl Evans said the processor group has been “open with the minister, the commission and the growers that we will not negotiate 2017 contracts under the current predatory system. There are other processors who will be announcing their decision early in the new year.”

The tomato processors said Wednesday their action “is on top of the 100,000-ton cutback on tomatoes for processing announced last week.”

“Small growers are the victims of their own association’s cartel, and should hold their executive accountable for their economic losses,” Sun-Brite Foods CEO John Iacobelli said in Wednesday’s release.

“Millions of dollars in economic activity is now at risk as a result of the growers’ decision not to follow the commission’s recommendation.”

In a separate letter to Premier Kathleen Wynne on Wednesday, Evans urged her to “direct (Leal) to immediately implement the recommended changes to Regulation 440… we know you appreciate there cannot be further investment in the sector until the reforms recommended by your independent commission are implemented.” — AGCanada.com Network

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