Organization relieves Ontario's hot banana pepper growers from marketing constraints

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

The Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers have set the province’s four hot banana pepper growers free of their processing contract obligations, enabling them to sell their crop wherever they want.

The board decision to make an exemption to the organization’s marketing regulations follows Strubs Food Corp.’s abrupt announcement that it was discontinuing operations. The company was the main buyer of hot banana peppers in Ontario. It made the announcement just before the growing season.

Al Krueger, executive assistant to the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers, explains that the organization’s regulations stipulate farmers must sell their product to the Ontario processor who contracted their peppers. “They were not able to sell to anyone who would sell into the United States or to a pepper shipper.”

The board did negotiate prices for hot banana peppers this year “because at that time Strubs was still around,” Krueger says. But now those negotiated prices don’t apply.

Krueger says most pepper processors don’t use hot banana peppers. Instead they use sweet banana peppers and then add the heat, so the market for hot banana peppers is really limited. “By throwing it open, we thought it would give these guys a chance to market what they’re stuck with.”

The exemption to the regulation is for this year but the board will review it at the end of the year to determine if it should be permanent. BF