Thank you for the question. It has been a very interesting time.
What has been amazing is that the industry has pivoted throughout the supply chain. CPMA represents growers through to wholesalers and transportation logistics, as well as food service and retail. Everyone who has gone shopping has seen the strategies implemented at retail to enable a volume of shoppers in stores and/or social distance requirements and a flow of traffic through the retail outlets, regardless of size. That's been very effective. There have been added costs with the shields at checkout and, in some cases, other protective equipment.
Going back to look at the food service industry, that's going to be a very different environment. Checkout has been successful on enabling social distancing through drive-through windows and pickup orders. Looking at the wholesale community—the Toronto food terminal and other wholesale markets in Vancouver and Montreal—this is a real challenge relative to fresh fruits and vegetables, which are perishable items.
The purchase program and modelling are normally done where you look at the product and see the product quality. Freshness is key for the supply chain. How do you create an environment where the buyers can come with the appropriate personal protective equipment into the purchase environment, maintain social distancing, and still be able to purchase the product they can use within their retail outlets, from small independent grocers throughout the country?
On the fresh cut and processing side, this is perhaps the biggest challenge, from there back to the grower, where you look at how you do social distancing. This is similar to meat plants and other facilities, where you repack fruit and vegetables and/or work in a fresh cut environment, such as an apple-packing line. How do you manage that and still put volume out to meet market demand? That has been the greatest challenge.
In spreading out the line, volume has dropped. How we can create the appropriate guidelines and standards, leveraging personal protective equipment to enable the social distancing model to be shrunk slightly, or have some type of barriers, is something the industry is looking at, but again, it is varying across the country on municipal application, on how the rules are applied and regulated.
Going to the growers' side, the challenge now goes into how growers actually apply pest management products and other tools in the field. Do they have enough personal protective equipment for their farm workers when they are in the field working, either in planting or eventually in harvesting?
The funding that has come out, the $252 million from the federal government, is greatly appreciated. In the breakdown of those monies, the $50 million is of interest. I'm curious to see how that will work relative to surplus. We've often talked to the federal government about those funds, specifically because the model is used in the U.S. successfully, and how you take surplus product, which I talked about, and distribute it to insecure populations or at-risk populations or other channels, is key. The next step now will be how we do that.