The recent expansion of the BC Vegetable Marketing Commission’s mandate to the entire province has caught vendors at northern BC farmers markets by surprise.
Several growers and market vendors received letters from BC Veg alerting them to the potential impact on their operations and the possible need for them to become licensed.
The letter was a hot topic of discussion at the BC Association of Farmers Markets’ annual conference in North Vancouver, March 1-3.
BCAFM chair Wylie Bystedt says no one was aware of the commission until the communications were received. Many were taken by surprise, and questioned whether the alert was legitimate.
The commission regulates the sale and distribution of 20 storage crops, greenhouse crops and processing crops. These include all varieties of potatoes; yellow onions; tops-off beets and carrots; and greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers as well as selected lettuces.
While the powers of the commission are real, a clarification the commission issued February 29 notes that producers growing less than a tonne of regulated product are exempt from licensing, as are commercial producers selling less than $5,000 of regulated product.
Meanwhile, the rest of the meeting was business as usual, with one of the association’s most popular and lucrative programs, the BC Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon Program, going digital, allowing customers to tap when paying for produce and other items through the BC Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon Program.
“It allows our partners [such as food banks] to load cards on a regular basis,” BCAFM coupon program manager Peter Leblanc told the conference.
Ron Gorman, executive director of the Fraser North Farmers Market Society which operates the Haney, Port Coquitlam and Pitt Meadows markets, was initially intimidated to try the card but it saved him the time required to count the upwards of 18,000 coupons the society’s three markets receive each summer.
“I didn’t have to count a single coupon,” Gorman says.
The conference also saw the launch of a tasting passport that will generate visitor data to better understand attendees.
“The power of the app is that people check-in,” says BCAFM executive director Heather O’Hara. “It’s a new engagement exercise.”
The passport will operate in conjunction with and complement the BC Farmers Market Trail program.
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