Fall of the blueberry boom: Why supporting local farmers matters

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Blueberries are a staple in many British Columbian households. During the summer, empty boxes of fresh blueberries litter homes across the province. 

The fruit is grown on more than 193,000 acres of farmland across the country, making it the highest fruit area in Canada as of 2021. That same year, Canadian farmers produced more than 146,500 metric tonnes of fresh blueberries. 

B.C. produced 170 million pounds of blueberries in 2022, almost as much as Washington state.

Despite blueberries being one of B.C.’s most famous and profitable industries, blueberry farmers still can’t seem to survive. 

The main challenges blueberry farmers in B.C. face are overproduction and competition in global markets, says Kent Mullinix, director for the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems (ISFS) at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Mullinix, born and raised in Missouri, has lived and worked on family farms in the United States his entire life. In graduate school, he worked on a 250-acre farm in Missouri, which later went out of business in the 1980s.

He immigrated to Canada in 2007 after selling his pear orchard in Washington state. After living the city life in Vancouver for 15 years, he bought a farm in Sooke three years ago, where he grows Asian pears, apples, and table grapes.

Mullinix says B.C. blueberry farmers are producing a crop sold on the global market, a system which rewards low-cost producers.

“They’re competing against every blueberry farmer in the world, literally,” he says. 

“It’s probably not often that B.C. can be the low-cost producer just by virtue of the value of our agricultural land, the cost of labor, and the cost of inputs now.” 

Almost all of B.C.’s blueberries are grown in the Fraser Valley, Richmond, Pitt Meadows, Matsqui Prairie, and Surrey. Agricultural land in the Lower Mainland sells for more than $100,000 an acre on average, according to Farm Credit Canada (FCC). 

In 2023, FCC reported farmland values dropped 3.1 per cent in B.C, and 19.3 per cent in the Lower Mainland. This was the first annual decline since 2010, and the most significant since 1998. However, farmland in the Lower Mainland still costs $112,200 an acre on average.

“Land in Washington state costs a fraction of what it does in B.C,” Mullinix says. “I can go to eastern Washington and buy blueberry land for $5,000 an acre.”

Growing climate change issues have also created more challenges for the farmers. 

“We grow what we grow, where we grow it, because of [the] weather,” Mullinix says.

Weather is one of the “significant risks” of farming, but weather patterns were predictable to a point where farmers were comfortable risking it, he says.

 “Climate change has just exacerbated that by orders of magnitude.”

Floods are becoming more severe and common, and weather patterns are more unpredictable. Droughts and water scarcity will also become more common as the climate continues to warm, according to the provincial government’s CleanBC program.

Agriculture also creates emissions. In 2021, five per cent of B.C.’s total emissions came from the agriculture industry. Fossil fuels burn on farms to run tractors and machinery and operate greenhouses. Gasses released by livestock digesting food and even growing crops all also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

“Many of the major agriculture regions of the world are significantly threatened [by climate change],” Mullinix says. 

“California’s Central Valley is turning into a desert again, they’re running out of water …. In India, ocean encroachment on major agricultural areas is salinizing soils. In Punjab, the aquifer that we irrigate from is depleted. Farmers are drilling down to 1,000 feet now, and they have to pay to pump that water up, [adding] more cost to production.”

China’s Yangtze River, the Rio Grande, and the U.S.’s Ogallala Aquifer are all being pumped dry for agriculture, Mullinix says. 

“In Canada, if we don’t change the trajectory we’re on, the Prairies are going to become a dust bowl again,” he says.

“Climate change is playing havoc around the world and it is playing havoc in B.C. …. This is another reason for diversifying [farms], because if one crop fails, the other one might not.” 

B.C. farmers are feeling the weight of the growing challenges they face.

Harpreet Nagra owns Sunshine Meadow Farms in Pitt Meadows. Nagra has been farming in Canada since 2011 and made the move to the area after selling her shares of a farm she co-owned in South Surrey in 2022.

Nagra is originally from Punjab and comes from a farming family spanning generations. 

“My grandfather, father, husband, and his family were all farmers in India,” she says. “Farming is our passion.”

Rising temperatures and weather changes are the “main challenge for farmers,” Nagra says, adding that half of her strawberry patches were lost because of growing rain storms this year. 

“It’s always like this,” Nagra says. “Until now, there has been too much rain, and in the coming months there’s going to be too little rain. You need some balance.”

In her second year of owning her farm in Pitt Meadows, Nagra made some changes to prepare for the unpredictable weather. 

“We made a covered area, like an [unheated] greenhouse … to speed up vegetable growth,” she says.

Sunshine Meadow Farms is 20 acres, about half of which Nagra uses to grow blueberries.

“When we bought the farm it was just blueberries, … but you can’t survive [by only growing] blueberries,” Nagra says.

“We started growing various vegetables, garlic, leafy vegetables, radishes, [and] carrots,” Nagra says. “We [also] planted strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries.”

In 2022, fruit production in Canada increased by 13 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. However, highbush blueberries, the plant variety most common in B.C., saw a decline of 2.7 per cent. 

B.C. produces 96 per cent of highbush blueberries in the country. While blueberry farmers in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces saw increases of 49.3 per cent for their lowbush blueberries, B.C. farmers saw the opposite. 

Larger farms are also struggling under current conditions. Surrey Farms is one B.C.’s largest producers of blueberries. Owner Mandy Rai farms over 1,000 acres, with 400 acres in Surrey and 600 acres on Vancouver Island in Comox. 

Rai and her husband started farming in 1989. They bought 65 acres in Surrey and continued to buy more farmland every five years or so.

Blueberry farming was easier when she first started out, Rai says. 

“The blueberry [retail] price was very high, labour was very low, [and] property prices were very low.”

She says it became more difficult to farm in B.C. about 10 years ago. When she lost money in 2023, Rai’s husband and son had to help her pay the bills with their businesses.

When her son was 19, he wanted to work at the family’s farm.

“I [told him to] try. I’ll give you one year to try, and at the end of the year he said, ‘Mom I don’t make any money [farming],’” Rai says. 

“I’m 65 now and I’m ready to retire. I don’t think anybody will look after my farm. I think my son will have to hire someone to look after it after I retire.”

Rai says people who shop locally want fresher produce and are trying to help farmers. Surrey Farms operates two farm markets in Surrey. However, she has to sell to canaries because she out produces what she can sell directly.

Rai says canaries don’t pay much, because blueberries are coming from Peru, Mexico, and other countries where sellers can get them for cheaper.

Sunshine Meadow Farms experiences the same problems. Nagra sells as much as she can to consumers directly to avoid having to send her blueberries to canaries. 

“I try my best to go to farmers markets and [sell] at the farm stand,” Nagra says, adding that canaries will drop how much they pay farmers for blueberries altogether. 

The highest canaries will pay per pound for blueberries is right at the start of the season for a few days, Nagra says. In her experience, that number is $1.50 per pound of blueberries. Once the season has picked up and farmers are going to the canaries, they will drop their prices to one dollar or $1.10 within a week. Nagra pays 65 cents per pound in picking labour costs. 

“If you’re paying 65 cents to the picker, and you’re taking care of watering, labour, everything, you end up with nothing,” Nagra says. 

Sunshine Meadow Farms sells at three local farmers markets, including the White Rock Farmers Market. They were awarded the market’s “Best Farm Stall” title in 2022.

This year is the market’s 25th anniversary, and manager Patti Oldfield has watched how farmers have been affected during her four years in the role.

“Something that I’ve noticed that’s really changed is that a lot of farmers are not bringing farm products like vegetables,” Oldfield says. 

“I’ve got a few farmers that are now bringing jams, jellies, some are turning to wine, spirits, [and] liqueurs …. I think a lot of farmers, since COVID, are not recovering very easily, so they’re finding other means to recover.” 

Oldfield has also seen organic farmers who can no longer be certified organic because of the high use of pesticides in the soil and air near their farms.

“We have one vendor that bought huge greenhouses and another farmer that built one on a smaller scale to protect the product from the big farmers that are driving up and down, just spraying pesticides,” Oldfield says.

“It’s getting harder and harder for smaller farmers … to protect their product.” 

The White Rock Farmers Market has been growing with visitors. During the 2022 season, the market saw about 85,000 visitors, and there were 95,594 in 2023.

“I’ve heard that market shopping is expensive, and I said, ‘Well, it’s costing farmers way more money to get this produce to you,’” Oldfield says, adding that she’s had a number of farmers not come to the market anymore, including garlic, micro-greenery, and mushroom vendors. 

By shopping locally, you get nutritional food and know where it’s coming from, she says. 

“[If someone] is supporting local, it’s because they care about the community, they care about the environment.” 

Farmers need people to purchase their product, Oldfield says. “I can’t speak for them, but I certainly know [this is] their passion.”

KPU’s farm is run by the sustainable agriculture program at the Richmond campus and sells their produce at the Kwantlen St. Market, which is also in Richmond.

The sustainable agriculture program uses the KPU farm as a lab, KPU Farm Coordinator Ben Alles wrote in an email statement to The Runner. 

“The KPU farm specifically offers organic certified, sustainably and student grown produce to the community through the farmers market,” Alles wrote. 

“Buying local … provides the opportunity for the consumer to know what goes into producing their food. Labels can be misleading and if you buy local you will often have the ability to meet the farmer and potentially even see the farm first hand.”

The KPU farm also donates produce to the university and Richmond community. They help stock the community fridge at the Richmond campus and Kwantlen Student Association’s food bank. In 2023, the KPU farm donated over $27,000 worth of produce to the Richmond Food Bank.

“Consumers should support the KPU farm because they’re not only supporting a farm that practices regenerative and sustainable practices, but they are literally investing in the education of the next generation of sustainably minded food producers,” Alles wrote.

The young generation has “tremendous interest” in farming, but they don’t want to engage in a global industrial system, Mullinix says. 

“They want to engage in robust regional systems, grow food in ways that nurture Mother Earth, and provide nutritious wholesome food for people in their communities,” he says. 

“That’s the future that I see young people embracing, but the system is stacked against them, so they can barely make a go of it.”

Regional food systems are systems where agriculture, post-production, distribution, purchasing, and consumption all happen in the same region, as opposed to globally. 

“Right now, we’ll grow our food in China, we’ll process it in some other country, we’ll distribute it from a third country, send it to a distribution centre in Calgary, and then it ends up in Surrey,” Mullinix says.

“When you bring the food economy home and you have a relationship with your neighbours who are producing it, you’re engaged in a regional food system network more fully, then you have a greater sense of what the impacts of producing that food and getting it to your table are.”