I'll begin by speaking of some of my personal experiences in farming and then I'll expand into the industry perspective, as last year I served as president of the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers' Association.
I grew up on a family farm that initially was set up to grow export apples. At that time we produced 150 acres. Today we grow 25 acres of apples and pears and we basically do value-added on all that to make our living.
In the early seventies we started a U-pick and sweet cider business. In 1995 we added a vinegar business and we now produce sweet cider, organic sweet cider, apple cider vinegar, organic apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, and a novel product called balsamic apple cider vinegar.
I have never had another career. I've always wanted to farm. I work with my dad. I started farming full-time in 1989. Today 60% of our production is certified organic. I'd have never gotten down that path except we wanted to make an organic apple cider vinegar and I became very interested in that. I was aided to go that route by our local research station, where we had a group of researchers and fellow growers who wanted to work together to learn how to grow organic fruit in this climate. That was really beneficial to me. I would never have gotten as far as I have today if that hadn't been available to me. A lot of the meetings actually took place over lunch, because I think some of those people probably weren't allowed to spend their time on that endeavour, their working hours, so they gave their lunch up and did that.
At this point in time, we've really shrunk our business down. And in all the innovative things we've accomplished, because we do have that reputation within the industry, the commonality has been access to our local research facility. It took a lot to learn how to make vinegar and grow organic apples, and just grow apples in general. It's really part of what I see as important to having a regional food system, and I think we can short-circuit the retailers a bit if we promote regional food to our different areas, to the people who live in them, so that they do the full strategy through the chain.
We do have distribution all over the Maritimes of the products we produce, but one of the things that has occurred to me that I didn't see coming is we can get about a 20% to 120% premium on our organic fruit. We pay for third-party certification. It costs probably $3,000 a year, and I feel I make enough to easily pay for that certification, but now all of a sudden we've been asked to provide on-farm food safety and throw that in. I have questions about that. Furthermore, in the last ten years the Canadian Food Inspection Agency...at one point they looked at us as a cottage industry, and now they say we have to have everything to food plant standards. We've probably put in $10,000 a year in the last five to ten years, and scratching that money up has been interesting. It's an expense ten years ago I didn't see coming. We were always reinvesting a bit, but... And I'm not being hard on food safety; I think it's very important. But it's an area I didn't see coming as to where I need to spend money.
On an industry level, we've been working together to revitalize ourselves and create a sustainable industry. Honeycrisp has been our success story, and I think will continue to be for some time. We are also working strategically to use high-value cultivars to bring our industry forward and increase our producers' return. We've also spearheaded a bio-products research chair at our local agricultural university, which has led to several exciting discoveries for apple byproducts. New cultivars have brought new challenges. Honeycrisp is a wonderful apple, but it requires a fair bit of research to get good storage and it also takes a good degree of horticultural expertise to get this working. That's another example of why we need primary production research.
I'm very concerned, though. We're increasing grower returns, but are we going to be able to attract new entrants? The median age of our growers is getting old now. New entrants will bring new ideas and new concepts to our industry, and that's what's needed. But if we're not profitable, I don't feel that we can go forward as an industry and open that door.
That's basically everything I want to bring to the table today.
Thank you.