Competition with BC blueberries is coming out of four US regions currently, including Washington, Oregon, New Jersey and Michigan. “There’s a lot of fruit on the market at once,” said Driediger. With the estimated 500,000,000 pounds of fruit that needs to be moved, she said desired consumption would be for every person to eat a minimum of one pound of blueberries.
Better exchange rate this year
Prices remain close to the same but the FOB is better this year than last. “The good thing for us in Canada is that there’s about a 30 per cent exchange rate this year,” noted Driediger. Last year’s $10 FOB was difficult for shipping. “We’d still like it to be higher – the prices in the industry are just way too low. I don’t know how much additional fruit we’re moving with these low, low prices. Overall (last year) we ended up doing more tonnage but in reality the quality of that tonnage wasn’t there whereas this year we’re going to have a much larger crop with fabulous quality.”
Over the next few days workers will be processing heavily around rainy weather to keep ahead of picking and then they’ll be back to hand picking, hopefully into a longer season. “Last year we finished at the end of August but I think this year we may go into September,” she said. “Once we get through this weather system we should be fine. I think there’s some better weather coming.”
Challenges with MRLs & tariffs
Driediger said working against MRLs can be a problem, making it difficult to get good fruit into other markets such as the EU. “The EU has really low MRL for very common, very soft products. It’s a bit frustrating because we could be supplying a lot to the EU but (can’t) because of the sprays we’re using for SWD. Canada and the United States standards are currently 8 parts per million in Canada, 10 in the US for Malathion but staggeringly low tolerance in Europe, well below 0.2.
She also hopes the tariff on Canadian blueberries going into China, which receives about 20 per cent of Driediger’s blueberries, will be lifted or at least greatly reduced. “It’s quite high and makes us uncompetitive,” she explained. “The interesting thing is there’s virtually no tariff on Chilean. Their government negotiated a very good trade deal. It affects us because frozen Chilean product goes at a higher price therefore the packer and the grower make more money. Our tariff is going strictly to the government. Hopefully that will be rectified over the next couple of years.”
For more information:
Rhonda Driediger
Driediger Farms/Blueridge Produce
Ph 604-888-1685
rhonda@driedigerfarms.com
http://driedigerfarms.com