Local foods campaign missing its mark?

© AgMedia Inc.

by SUSAN MANN

The chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association says a provincial marketing campaign promoting locally grown foods isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do — get local products onto grocery store shelves.

Brenda Lammens, chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association, says Ontario’s major retailers such as Loblaws, Metro and Sobeys aren’t totally on board with the Pick Ontario Freshness program, a provincial government consumer awareness advertising campaign launched in 2007 to stimulate demand for Ontario foods.

“We hear about Pick Ontario Freshness and everybody seems to be rallying to support it, but when push comes to shove those purchase orders aren’t coming out until they’ve got the imports off the shelves,” Lammens says.

This situation is particularly noticeable in asparagus, a crop Lammens grows, because it’s the first crop of the season and it’s very susceptible to frost. Frequent frosts have hammered this year’s asparagus crop. 

“When we have inventory to go to market and they have imports there because they feel more secure with imports they won’t give us a purchase order for our products,” she says.

Lammens adds she doesn’t know if that’s the case for all Ontario products. But “if there are imports there, they’re slow to take the domestic product.”

Krista Pawley, vice-president of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, says in an email to Better Farming that what stores and chains decide to buy is based on a variety of factors, such as food safety, reliability of quality, availability and price. “All things being equal, a purchase will be made from a local producer.”

The Council is a non-profit organization representing the grocery and food service distribution industry in Canada.

Brent Ross, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman, says the Foodland Ontario Pick Ontario Freshness strategy is “meant to make consumers aware of Ontario products and hopefully to persuade them to request them when they go to a retail outlet.”

As part of the program, retailers can get point-of-sale signs and other materials. But the ministry can’t make the stores buy Ontario products. “In terms of their actual purchasing, that’s up to the individual stores and chains,” Ross says.

Lammens says she’s frustrated the government keeps putting money into this program and there’s “almost a sense that everybody’s on board but when the reality of the harvest happens it’s not always the local product that the retailers have on the shelves.”

She says if the retailers are going to support ‘Pick Ontario Freshness’ they should really support it by giving farmers their purchase orders. Lammens says she is disappointed that since it is now the third year of the program there would be more “buy in from the retailers” than there was in previous years.

But unless consumers demand local products, “the retailer’s going to sell what he sells,” she says. BF