Shawn Brenn, chair, OFVGA, cites a long list of barriers that are pinching growth in the horticultural sector. They include: carbon taxes, high interest rates, regulatory challenges at all levels.

Right people, right roles. That’s the mantra of HR manager, Amanda Doughty at Sandy Shore Farms, Port Burwell, Ontario. She works closely with assistant Pancho Chanquin who speaks in Spanish to Mexican worker José Francisco Perez.

Valent BioSciences has registered Accede PGR for peaches and nectarines, a breakthrough practice for thinning tender fruit growers in the U.S. David Hipple has participated in product trials in his Beamsville, Ontario peach orchard with hopes that a label extension will be granted in Canada.

The farmgate value of greenhouse vegetable production is 36 per cent of the approximately $6 billion of Canadian horticultural produce. Currently, lettuce is a small slice of the greenhouse vegetable sector, but it’s well positioned for rapid growth.

Growers such as Mike Chromczak have a big crop protection responsibility – in his case 2,000 acres of asparagus, watermelon and rotational crops of corn, soybeans and wheat near Brownsville, Ontario. In future, biologicals will be a bigger part of the product mix.