KELOWNA – When equipment was removing the apple trees from his orchard in spring 2025, Shayne Witzke largely stayed inside the family farmhouse, grieving the end to three generations of apple production.
The Kelowna orchard had earned industry awards for fruit quality and innovation, but with declining margins, external pressures such as loans, pests and extreme weather, and the passing of his father Brian, leasing the land was the realistic succession plan.
Witzke grew up working alongside his father on the 30-acre Kelowna orchard his grandfather Henry purchased in 1946. Originally planted to apples and cherries, the farm began focusing solely on apple production in 1981. Shayne came on board in 1996 after studying horticulture at College of the Rockies in Creston.
“Dad purchased another seven acres across the road from our 30-acre property, so it seemed like the right time,” Witzke explains, sitting in the kitchen of the farmhouse his parents built in the 1960s.
Northview Orchards Ltd. developed a reputation for innovation and top-quality fruit. After visiting Europe in the 1980s and seeing new orchard advancements, Brian Witzke adopted high-density plantings. In 1992, Brian and his wife Dorothy received the BC Fruit Growers’ Association’s Golden Apple award recognizing fruit quality and horticultural excellence.
The family shipped their fruit to the former BC Tree Fruits Cooperative but left in the early 2020s, fearing harm to their farm’s reputation and foreseeing the organization’s demise. They began marketing their fruit independently, relying on established customer relationships and a reputation for quality. In 2021, Shayne was also awarded the Golden Apple.
Over the years, the farm supported his parents and Witzke. He tried off-farm jobs twice to create more income, but those were short-lived.
At his urging, he and his dad hired four temporary foreign workers from Mexico to help with labour. Several returned annually and attended Brian’s celebration of life alongside family in 2024.
“They were quickly trained, consistent and reliable compared to the average Canadian transient farm workers of the past,” says Witzke.
Over the years, the family repeatedly invested in new varieties promoted as the industry’s future, only to have market expectations shift or the varieties produce less optimally than hoped.
“Mom and Dad were progressive enough to try, but they took arrows to the back. Our extended family, the industry, all they saw was, ‘they’re making all kinds of big money,’ but they didn’t see the whole picture,” Witzke says.
Even premium apple varieties like Ambrosia and Honeycrisp rarely result in the financial returns consumers assume growers receive.
“$500 a bin is the highest we’ve ever been paid on average for our high-end products, even in later years, with Honeycrisp,” Witzke says. “We had only one year where we got $1 a pound. That, on a product where the apple trees take three to five years to produce and 50% of the fruit hits the ground as culls.”
The majority of profits went to servicing debt, including replant loans; anything left over was reinvested into the orchard. Shayne continues to repay a loan from Farm Credit Canada that was originally several hundred thousand dollars.
In the late 1990s, Shayne purchased his mother’s shares in the farm, making him and his father full partners. But this initial step in succession accelerated with his father’s death in 2024.
The Witzkes had regularly talked about succession, including a couple of weeks before his father’s death.
With no wife or children, the younger Witzke faced the options of selling, downsizing the farm to make the operation more manageable or leasing it to other growers.
“I had a heart-to-heart with my accountant shortly after Dad’s passing. She said if I continued farming, within five years I’d be so far in debt I’d never crawl out,” he says. “I walked to the spot in the orchard where I’d found my deceased grandfather 30 years earlier and cried, facing one of the toughest decisions of my life.”
Rising production costs, labour uncertainty, increasing regulatory requirements and lower prices from retailers struggling to maintain their own margins and address society’s and governments’ desire to keep food cheap convinced Witzke that farming was no longer financially sustainable.
Witzke and his lawyer ultimately negotiated a multi-decade lease agreement with a large local cherry operation.
“In spring 2025, our award-winning apple orchard was removed in just a few weeks while I mostly hid away in the house and cried,” says the 50-year-old.
Witzke encourages young farmers to pursue education, develop skills outside agriculture and gain experience in that business before fully committing to farming. He’s currently taking online courses to return to the off-farm workforce.
He also recommends working closely with accountants, lawyers and financial advisors and maintaining at least a basic understanding of business management.
While he considers himself good with money, Witzke says the lease isn’t enough to fund the rest of his life. He stresses the importance of putting money into investments to create longer-term, personal financial stability while farming.
Witzke says wills and open and honest discussions are essential.
“I know so many farmers who hesitate, trying to protect their children from the realities of the world,” he says. “That is detrimental. Even young kids understand there’s issues and underlying stressors on the farm.”
Witzke also encourages farmers to build friendships, hobbies and community connections outside agriculture. Counselling has helped him process the loss of his father and letting go of farming.
Although he has no immediate plans to sell the land – the only home he’s ever known – Witzke believes the agriculture sector, governments and society need to talk about and normalize profitability for farms, without farmers having to sell their land.
“People are comfortable talking about sustainability,” he says. “They’re not nearly as comfortable talking about profitability.”
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