The B.C Fruit Growers’ Association is once again appealing to area residents to consider picking fruit as temporary employment.
“We are asking local workers who are unemployed to help out,” said Glen Lucas, general manager of BCFGA.
A similar plea was made earlier in the season ahead of the Okanagan’s cherry harvest.
The plea comes in the wake of a severe labour shortage of foreign workers, as well as employees from other parts of Canada, such as Quebec, due to pandemic-related travel restrictions and overall concerns surrounding COVID-19.
“Apple and pear growers are very concerned about the labour situation this year,” said Lucas, who estimates the labour supply is down 20 per cent.
That has left growers, such as Kevin Day who grows pears on about 40 acres of land, working very long hours.
“It’s a very stressful time right now,” Day told Global News.
Day owns Days Century Growers and has been producing pears for decades, but has never struggled this much to hire help.
He’s currently down at least five workers and scrambling to get as many pears of trees as he can before it’s too late.
“There’s a lot of pears on the ground,” he said. “They get loose and fall off and they are yellow on the tree.”
His on-site packing house is also struggling to keep up.
“My daughter is crying in the packing house because she doesn’t have enough labour in there,” Day said.
The lack of workers in the packing house is already impacting his bottom line and some of his major customers, including Costco, Loblaws and Sobeys.
“The orders are coming and we are struggling as hard as we can to fill them. But the risk is that if we cannot fill them, then they will go elsewhere,” he said.
“They’ll come back, but maybe they’ll go for a week or two to another plant in Washington or something. Then we have to wait for the pipeline to empty before we resume.”
At the Farming Karma orchard in East Kelowna, the family-owned business is preparing for the upcoming apple harvest, trying desperately to still secure labourers.
“We are still very hopeful that we are able to get the workers that we need. But then again, it’s very difficult to say right now if that will happen, and that is a very scary thought,” said Avi Gill.
The family also grows cherries and has already experienced a labour shortage of about 25 per cent during that harvest.
“The apple crop this year, it is average or above, so we are really concerned that we may not be able to pick all of the apples on time,” Gill told Global News.
“And ultimately, with apple pricing in the past few years, that is a very difficult loss to handle.”
The BCFGA said if the cherry harvest is any indication, apple and pear growers could face crop losses of up to 20 per cent this year due to the labour shortage.
“It’s very significant for growers, because all of their costs are incurred now, except for the picking. And yet they give up all of the revenue on that 20 per cent of the apples,” Lucas said.
The BCFGA also warned consumers could be affected.
“I think what we will see and actually have seen is perhaps less variety of what’s available and also higher food prices,” Lucas said.
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