September trade show to highlight fruit and vegetable industry

Thursday, January 13, 2011

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

A new trade show that takes place later this year in Norfolk County will highlight equipment for the fruit and vegetable industry.

Jordon Underhill, owner of ROI Event Management in Simcoe and one of the event’s organizers, says they are hoping to attract between 10,000 and 15,000 people.

Called Canada’s Fruit & Veg Tech X-Change, the event will take place Sept. 1-3 at Blueberry Hill Estates near Turkey Point Provincial Park. Sept. The 200-acre commercial blueberry farm is home to a conference centre, farmers’ market and winery. The owner, Dale Vranckx, is the show’s other main organizer.

Underhill says a visit to the World Ag Expo in California five years ago as inspirational. Raised on a cash crop and beef farm, he says, “I could hardly figure out what the equipment was. I mean there was a tree shaker, a nut picker and the combine heads were all different.” That’s when it hit him: “this fruit and vegetable industry is so specialized and what a great opportunity to showcase it live at a trade show.”

He says locating in Norfolk County is an advantage because it is “the true heart” of the province’s fruit and vegetable country and central to big players in other areas in the province.

The organizers want to attract not only fruit and vegetable producers and their families but also local cottagers and local farmers involved in other forms of production and have purposely overlapped the show’s dates with the Labour Day weekend.

Underhill says that they are “well underway” to reaching the goal of attracting 250 exhibitors from Canada, the United States and Europe. They want to make the show an annual event that will eventually attract up to 800 exhibitors.

Dr. John Kelly is organizing a speakers’ program that will take place at noon each day. Kelly is vice president of Erie Innovation and Commercialization, an agriculture-focused economic development initiative for the south central Ontario region. BF