The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA) is involved with and supports a variety of partners and their initiatives. We do so for many reasons, but generally, we share common values around food, nutrition, healthy eating, and fruit and vegetable production in Ontario and Canada. 

Every once in a while, though, there is an unwelcome surprise that makes us take a step back and wonder how well we really know the organizations we partner with. That’s the situation OFVGA and our members, particularly the Ontario Apple Growers (OAG) found ourselves in during the second week of March. 

Since 2008, Toronto-based food security organization FoodShare has been hosting an event called the Great Big Crunch. They bill it as an annual moment of anti-silence where students, teachers, parents, and others passionate about food join the food movement and crunch into apples (or other crunchy fruit or vegetable) to make noise for healthy school food.

The fruit and vegetable sector has been a big supporter of this event since its inception in 2008 as it promotes consumption of locally grown, healthy food products and education of the next generation of consumers about our food system. Many growers also individually support FoodShare’s community-and school-focused food programs. 

Imagine our shock and dismay this year, when two days ahead of the March 11 event, we discovered that FoodShare was also promoting an educator toolkit called “Spotlight on Migrant Farm Workers,” which includes propaganda-style misinformation on temporary foreign workers and their treatment while in Canada.

How we were able to respond - and what we achieved on very short notice - truly is a success story for OFVGA, our members and growers, and public outreach about our food system. It also speaks to the value of strong relationships with government and the very valuable resource we have in our memberships with Farm & Food Care Ontario and AgScape. 

We quickly pulled together a small working group of staff from OFVGA, OAG, AgScape and Farm & Food Care Ontario and within short order, that group developed a positive and proactive action plan to get out a more accurate portrayal of temporary foreign workers in our sector. 

OFVGA and OAG reached out to Ernie Hardeman, Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce, letting them know why we weren’t supporting the event this year and asking their ministries not to do so either. And when another ministry tweeted a link to the toolkit, it was quickly removed when we got in touch to let them know about our concerns around misinformation entering the school system. 

In less than two days, that group, under the leadership of Farm & Food Care Ontario and AgScape, developed a terrific downloadable teacher resource about temporary foreign workers along with a video, social media posts and seasonal worker profiles that were shared and promoted by all the involved organizations. 

The video and teacher resource combined, for example, had a reach of almost 30,000 people on Farm & Food Care Ontario and AgScape’s social media channels. A Faces Behind Food post on Instagram featuring a father and son who were both seasonal workers on a southwestern Ontario apple farm has chalked up more than 21,000 impressions since it was posted on March 4. 

And although we’ll never know exactly how much of an impact we had, there’s no doubt that Great Big Crunch would have felt the lack of participation from government and the agriculture sector. 

We often talk about the need to get “our” story out there proactively and are disappointed when those efforts aren’t heard or aren’t successful. In this case, however, we had a heads up and were able to take proactive action, which speaks to what we can achieve by working together. 

It’s also a learning opportunity for our sector, however. How well do we really know some of the organizations we are aligned with? Do our values align or has there been a shift that we’re not aware of? 

We just had a good reminder that we all need to be mindful of who we fund or sponsor and keep abreast of their activities.