Quebec plans to grow berries in winter on supply fears

Bloomberg

Quebec’s efforts to grow fruits and vegetables during freezing winter months have gained new urgency after the coronavirus pandemic exposed risks to supply chains around the world.
The Canadian province touted a C$1.3 million ($930,000) investment in an engineering company that outfits farmers to produce strawberries in winter. Premier Francois Legault also called on people who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic to work on farms, as travel restrictions make it harder to recruit seasonal foreign workers.
“Would some of you be tempted to come work with our farmers, in our fields?” Legault said during a daily press conference. “We want Quebec to become more autonomous. We were worried, in the past month, that we wouldn’t be able to get the fruits and vegetables we import from the south.”
Legault, a self-described Quebec nationalist, has identified food and medical supply as two areas where he’d like Quebec to become more self-sufficient. Canada imported about C$3.6 billion ($2.6 billion) worth of vegetables in 2018, with about 60% coming from the US, according to data from Statistics Canada.
Now the pandemic has created international tensions as countries restrict exports of medical equipment and compete for scarce supplies. Food is affected too. Russia and Ukraine have put limits on agricultural trade and Kazakhstan recently extended its export quota on wheat, flour and other staples until September.
Global trade has increased food security, said Sylvain Charlebois, the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There’s now a risk governments will become too protectionist, he said.
“Before the crisis, you heard terms like plant-based, veganism, animal welfare. Now it’s about shelves, supply chains, flour and yeast,” said Charlebois. “Consumers get protective in a time of crisis when they’re fearful, but countries do the same.”
Quebec Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said the province of 8.5 million people remains in favour of free trade but sees an opportunity to dent an overall trade deficit of about C$20 billion. The government’s push for greater food autonomy had already started before the crisis, including through support for greenhouses, he said.
The government disclosed an investment in Ferme d’hiver, a local engineering business that developed vertical farming technology for indoor production.
The company, based outside of Montreal, has secured a deal to sell production to Empire Co. Ltd.’s IGA grocery stores in Quebec. The company gained support from the government several months ago but had been keeping a low profile, founder Yves Daoust said.
in an interview.
The company is in the process of enlisting fruit and vegetable growers, which it will help set up and from whom it will buy the products. Its five-year goal is to substitute 10% of Quebec’s fresh produce imports with food it helped grow, for reasonable prices that also ensure a decent income to farmers, Daoust said.