Okanagan’s new boom crop
Trevor Nichols - Feb 08, 2018 - Biz Releases

Image: File Photo

For decades, Okanagan Valley agriculture has been driven largely by its famous apple orchards. However, a growing portion of the valley’s agricultural land is being given over to a new crop, and all indications are that it’s set to grow rapidly over the next few years.

Cherry orchards are popping up across the Okanagan Valley, as farmers look to cash in on a near-insatiable international demand for the region’s sweet cherries.

Coral Beach, one of the largest cherry farms in the Okanagan, recently shared its plans to build a new packing plant to handle its growing cherry production.

Along with a new facility, owner David Geen says he will hire close to 900 workers this season to harvest his cherry crop.

Geen’s expansion is not unique.

Bucking the trend

As the total amount of farmland in Okanagan steadily shrinks, the amount of land planted with cherries is growing significantly.

Statistics Canada says that in 2016 there were 2,279 acres of cherries planted in the Central and North Okanagan. That’s a 28 per cent jump from the 1,638 planted in 2011.

And it appears those numbers will only increase.

Geen says Coral Beach Farms has approximately 640 planted acres of cherries, and last year produced about 3,000 tons of fruit.

That is a huge leap from the mid-90s, when he says he had much smaller acreage, and produced about 100 tons of cherries a year.

He guessed that within five years he will be producing about 7,000 tons a year and that in a decade he will top 10,000.

That will be thanks to an additional 90 acres he plans to plant in April, and another 250 he will have in the ground by 2020.

Geen says many of the new orchards will go up on land that has never been farmed before: former cattle ranches, pine forests, and dairy farms. Some will also grow on land that was once devoted to apples.

Image: BC Tree Fruits

Finding the niche

Geen says the steady growth of the Okanagan cherry industry can be traced in large part to the late 80s and early 90s, when researchers in Summerland developed new varieties that ripened later in the year.

Until then, Geen says local cherry farmers were “full-on butting heads” with farmers from the much-larger American cherry market.

But with cherries ripening in August instead of July Okanagan farmers were able to find a niche in the market no one else was serving.

“It meant we weren’t competing head-on with the Americans anymore,” he said.

The later varieties were also much more consistent and productive because they matured after the traditional rainy season, and were also self-fertilizing.

Geen says a few forward-thinking farmers began planting the new varieties in the early 90s, but that it took a while for them to take hold

However, once the results started to become apparent more and more growers began to jump on the bandwagon.

But while the new varieties have helped the industry steadily grow it was new trade regulations that spurred the recent cherry boom.

China hungry for cherries

Geen points out that gaining access to the Chinese market in 2013 was huge, as China is now one of the biggest consumers of Okanagan cherries.

Not long ago, the head of the BC Cherry Association told Kelowna city council the international market is so hungry for Okanagan cherries that farmers could never produce enough to satisfy it.

“We could plant every single acre of agricultural land in Kelowna with late-season cherries and still have people asking for them, that’s how much demand there is,” Sukhpaul Bal said.

Bal said the demand was “just astonishing” and that he expects it to increase “exponentially” in the next few years.

Fred Steele, the president of the BC Fruit Growers Association, has a similar assessment.

He recently told Okanagan Edge that “there is such demand for B.C. cherries of the right size that the Chinese market is almost never-ending.”

Steele added that, with international markets opening up, “they’re going to by flying cherries out of Kelowna to China and other parts of the world within the next few years.”


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