I eat a lot of strawberries. Not just in season but throughout the year. For many years I would buy $60 or more of local strawberries at the end of June, process them and put them in the freezer. I’d have a snack of strawberries whenever I felt like it. But in recent years I’ve been buying strawberries in the stores. They’re available all the time. Sometimes the berries are a little woody and sometimes they’re really good. They’re grown in Florida or California — mostly California.
California has 38,000 acres in strawberries. Ontario has 4,000 acres. I’ve been to California a few times and I toured the areas where the strawberries are grown. I bought strawberries at road stands for $2 a pound. Nice, big, juicy berries. The berries in California supermarkets cost more. But those same berries are cheaper here in Ontario.
The price of the imported berries in our supermarkets is a mystery because they are usually quite inexpensive. Maybe the stores sell them cheap to draw in the shoppers. And maybe it’s to kill off the Ontario berry growers.
In early July, I checked out a local grower’s berries at one of their stands. The berries were rather small and they were priced at $20 for four quarts. With the raise in minimum wage this year, I can understand why the berries went up in price. The young woman attendant selling the berries said the lack of rainfall affected the size and the quality of the berries.
That same day I was in a local supermarket and saw two-pound containers of California strawberries selling for $2.98. That’s $1.49 a pound. The berries were large and they looked fresh and juicy. I bought several containers and they were good. And juicy. None of the berries were spoiled. I prefer buying local but in this case the California berries were tops.
Josh Kraemer, Communications Intern with the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) wrote an interesting column for Local Food Week June 4 – 10.
He wrote: This week, the No Frill’s flyer offered a pound of U.S. strawberries for only a dollar. This means that a flat of these strawberries, equal to about nine pounds, goes for $9. If an employee picks two flats an hour for a local strawberry farmer, a $14/hour minimum wage is already costing the farmer almost all of the strawberries’ shelf price. That’s ignoring all other expenses.
It’s easy for foreign producers to dump their product in an external market for such a low price when they are not facing the same production costs that Ontario producers do. As a CBC interview with an Ontario farmer explains, factors such as a lower minimum wage and (in many states) free hydro allow American producers to put their product on shelves in Ontario at much lower costs than their local competitors. With the expenses that Ontario farmers face, it’s clear that competing with cheap imported alternatives is a daunting task.
There are so many advantages to choosing local food. The benefits include greater retention of wealth in local communities, environmental sustainability from reduced packaging and fossil fuels, a healthier diet for the consumer, and long-term preservation of farmland. Buying food locally might just seem like a choice for most, but in reality, it is an investment—in yourself, your community, and your local farmer.
