[getsmart-l] Niagara Region losing cannery - serious blow for local farmers or opportunity?

[Gloria Boxen]

http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Columnist/article/305160

Eat local  -  while you still can                  TheStar.com - Columnist - Eat local  -  while you still can             
                                                                                                                                                                               February 20, 2008      
                                                                Joe Fiorito

The winemaker Donald Ziraldo drove into town the other night, on his way to do business in Australia. He stopped by the Four Seasons for a cup of hot chocolate before continuing his journey.

 
This is not quite how the news was brought from Ghent to Aix, and in this instance the news was not good; urgency and purpose accompanied him to a corner table.


The news?

 
"The CanGro factory in the Niagara Peninsula is shutting down." The importance of this was not immediately clear to me, as a waiter appeared then at Ziraldo's elbow, offering hot chocolate in Spanish, American, French or Italian versions – the Spanish with port, and so on. Ziraldo raised an eyebrow.

 
"No Canadian hot chocolate? Why not a hot chocolate with icewine?" The waiter smiled apologetically. And I got the point at that moment: Who are we if we cannot put our own food on the table when we sit down to sup?

 
The reason for Ziraldo's urgency? "The factory is closing at the end of March. We're going to lose 147 full-time jobs in the region. Niagara-on-the-Lake is losing 400 part-time jobs."


Serious if you care about local food, serious if you care about keeping farmers on the land, serious if you care about Ontario jobs. After all, Niagara-on-the-Lake has a population of roughly 2,000 people; the loss of all that part-time work is a devastation.


It's not just jobs. Ziraldo said, "The factory is owned in the United States. Guess where they're getting their fruit from now?"

 
I have seen cucumbers from Saudi Arabia and asparagus from Peru in my local supermarkets. I guessed Mexico. "China," he said.  

Ridiculous.

 
What is to be done? Ziraldo said, "We should try to keep the cannery open until a buyer can be found."

 
Is it really that simple? After all, who is going to buy a plant producing something bought more cheaply elsewhere? Ziraldo took a sip of hot chocolate and offered a cool, clear-eyed set of suppositions. 
In the first place, there is a ready supply of fruit available in the Niagara region throughout the growing season, from berries through to peaches, grapes and apples.

 
In the second place, when fruit farms are taken out of production, it costs a ton of money to replant new crops, and it takes years before the new crop pays off.


In the third place, research done at Vineland is responsible for developing the clingstone peaches used by the canning industry: They are easy to skin, with flesh firm enough for processing; don't we have an obligation to take continuing advantage of that investment?


In the fourth place, the province seems to have made a commitment to support fresh local produce, but it is no longer possible, Ziraldo said, to buy canned or frozen fruit from the Niagara region.


In the fifth place, there is a wonderfully large and, forgive me, captive market in Ontario. As Ziraldo pointed out, "There are hospitals, schools and correctional facilities all around the province, and there is the military. They all need food. We could be providing fruit cups in every public institution in the province. We could be making juice. We could be freezing fruit." He did not mean civil service fruit cups. "This is business, not charity. We need creative financing. We need to create a Niagara brand so we can do the marketing." Imagine: our peaches in our lunchrooms, our apples in our pies.


  
And then Ziraldo went on his way. " `Good speed!' cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew."

 
There isn't much time.


Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Email: jfiorito at thestar.ca



 
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