Alberta Producers Optimistic about Harvest Despite Pandemic

Source: Edmonton Journal

Alberta potato growers are banking on a healthy harvest after COVID-19 decimated their supply system this spring.

Russell Van Boom, a seed potato farmer near Fort Saskatchewan, said he planted 90 per cent of his crops this year compared to last. He was anticipating slower demand come harvest time after processing plants and restaurants were temporarily closed or operating at reduced capacity to comply with health orders.

For Van Boom, who sells seed potatoes to potato growers, the provincial relaunch came too late to adjust how much product he could plant.

“We’re going to harvest what we harvest and that’s the case for both types of farmers, for seed farmers like us and for commercial farms that grow either for french fries or for fresh potatoes that you’d buy at a grocery store,” he said.

In April, the hit to the french fry market was closer to 80 per cent while restaurants were forced to shut their doors. That decrease saw the industry urge Canadians to eat french fries at home to stop potatoes from going to waste.

Hochstein said seed growers like Van Boom had to make a calculation of how hard they would get hit and plant accordingly.

“It was throwing a dart at a wall,” he said. “They had to guess what to plant for this coming year because they didn’t know what the demand was going to be. The decision that the seed growers made is going to affect the industry for the next three or four years.”

With Alberta currently in stage two of its relaunch plan, Hochstein says potato processing plants are beginning to get back to full capacity and an increase in demand for ordering in or taking out food from restaurants has helped to offset some of the losses during the lockdown.

Van Boom agreed that restaurants beginning to open gives him cautious hope for future markets.

“How is the rest of the economy gonna unfold and how close to normal are we going to be by October of 2021, because that dictates what we do today?” he said.

Beef bounced back

While taking a hit from the pandemic, beef ranchers were able to weather the storm. Rich Smith, executive director of Alberta Beef Producers, said that’s because the health crisis began at a time when ranchers were calving as opposed to selling their animals.

“(Ranchers) already we’re practicing self isolation because they were so busy,” he said.

The pandemic did disrupt beef processing plants in the province, including the Cargill facility in High River where nearly 1,000 workers tested positive for the novel coronavirus. However, the plants were able to renovate and were only forced to close for a few weeks after being declared an essential service.

Despite the lower numbers, Smith said the plants are gradually getting back to pre-COVID processing numbers.

“The plants have got back rolling again and right now they’re they’re getting close to capacity, full capacity. So that’s really been a benefit for our industry,” Smith said.

Numbers on the government of Alberta’s website shows the pandemic did come with a drop in beef prices with a drop of 16.9 per cent compared to April 2020 with cattle selling at $122.24 per hundredweight, approximately 112 pounds. That price also marked a decrease from $135.35 per hundredweight in March.

Smith said that despite the drop in prices, the impact on the beef industry was mitigated by the fact that, as restaurants closed, people were buying steaks and roasts as a treat to cook themselves.

“I did talk to people who said they hadn’t cooked a roast in years because they hadn’t had time and actually cooked to be froze so from the beef side we didn’t face the impact of milk and potatoes,” Smith said.

Economic Driver

Industry leaders now believe the province’s food systems could help the economy bounce back faster than other industries, such as tourism and oil and gas.

Tom Steve, general manager of the Alberta Wheat Commission, said he has been lobbying the government’s economic council to invest in agriculture as an industry that can boost the economy going forward.

“We’re working behind the scenes to try to make sure that agriculture is one of the engines of economic recovery. And I think that the government has recognized that,” he said.