On July 26, fruit growers across the province woke up to the news that the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative would no longer accept their produce.

“Due to extremely low estimated fruit volumes, weather impacts, and difficult market and financial conditions, the cooperative will not be able to effectively operate the business going forward,” said Laurel Van Dam, Vice President of Grower Relations and Corporate Affairs at BC Tree Fruits. in a statement.

BC Tree Fruits has been active in the agricultural industry since 1936 and currently has over 330 members and three packing and six receiving facilities.

“We are in shock and don’t know what to do halfway through the season,” said Jennifer Deol of There and Back Again Farms in Kelowna.

She said some farmers are currently in the middle of harvesting in the fields and are planning to deliver their produce to BC Tree Fruit facilities today.

According to Deol, the closure of BC Tree Fruits will have the greatest impact on small-scale farmers, who depend on the collective not only for sales but also for storage of their produce.

Deol explained that after harvest, farmers who were members of the cooperative would deliver their fruits to the cooperative for storage and processing. The cooperative would then negotiate the sale of the fruits with buyers all over the world. The process was transparent, as the farmers were also shareholders in the organization, Deol said.

Now, without access to BC Tree Fruits’ storage facilities, farmers will be forced to make quick deals with private buyers before their fruit rots. The storage facilities, which extend the life of fruit, also give sellers time to negotiate with buyers and allow growers to avoid flooding the market with fruit all at once, said Ted Vollo of Summerland Heritage Cider.

With no time constraints, farmers like Vollo and Deol have to make quick decisions.

Table grapes, such as those from the There and Back Again farm, must be stored in a temperature-controlled area immediately after harvest or they will spoil.

Vollo has thousands of bins of apples that need to be stored somewhere quickly.

“Effectively, we have 60,000 to 70,000 waste bins that currently need to be repurposed.”

He said there really isn’t another option for farmers, particularly in the Okanagan Valley, because they depend on the scale of BC Tree Fruits’ operations and unique services like controlled atmosphere storage.

For many farms, the cooperative provided a stable and reliable source of income.

Not all farmers are members of the collective and choose to arrange the sale, storage and processing of their fruit independently or through private companies.

Deol expected BC Tree Fruits to close, but she didn’t expect the announcement to come halfway through the growing season.

She said the loss of the ability to sell their produce, compounded by a “horrible” growing season, is a “devastating loss” not only for small-scale farmers but for the sector as a whole.

“It was very emotional.”

Doel expects that many small-scale and family businesses will be forced to sell after this season because they cannot conclude profitable deals with private buyers in time.

She hopes that another organization will fill the gap that BC Tree Fruits has in the area of ​​small-scale farmers.

In 2023, BC Tree Fruits began expanding its Oliver warehouse, after putting its Kelowna warehouse up for sale in 2021, its Kelowna offices up for sale in 2020, and closing its Lake Country warehouse in 2022.

BC Tree Fruits and its subsidiaries will now liquidate their assets “in an effort to maximize recovery for all stakeholders,” Van Dam said.