Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/60127
apples are ready for harvest. The workers typically return to Mexico in October, although last year three went to the Fraser Valley and worked there until mid-December. Without the workers, Gutknecht is blunt about his options. "I wouldn't do it anymore," he says. "We'd either sell the land or take the trees out and do some sort of farming where there isn't that much labor required." Costs add up But the costs of importing labor add to the expenses of an industry where margins are pinched by rising input costs and a relatively strong Canadian dollar, which has reduced the price of imported fruit versus local produce. While foreign labor is readily available and more reliable than local workers, it doesn't come cheap (see "Tallying the costs"). The costs are a consideration for Germaine and Robert Hogue of Roseridge Orchards in Kelowna, who first par- ticipated in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program last year. Roseridge has 15 acres of apple and eight acres of vegetables, and hired two workers from Mexico for six months last year. Germaine Hogue says the arrangement worked well. "They're pleasant, they're polite, they come here to work, they're serious about what they're doing," she said. But with the minimum wage growers are obliged to pay workers rising to $10.25 an hour this May, the second- highest in the country after Newfoundland (where it's $10.30 an hour), Hogue can't dismiss the cost. [A Cana- dian dollar is worth about the equivalent of a U.S. dollar.] The minimum hourly wage was $9.50 in 2011, and just $8.60 five years earlier. The increase this year is just 15 cents less than the total increase over the past five years, and amounts to 8 percent overall—the kind of increase growers haven't seen in their own pay. Then add in the rising cost of flying in workers, housing them, and providing the associated benefits. "It's scary," she said. "It's going to be at the point where average growers are not going to be able to afford them anymore." Providing for guest-workers and being hospitable isn't the issue, she explained. It's the economics. Take accommodations, for example. Accommodations Last season, B.C. growers were allowed to charge the seasonal program workers for housing, up to a maxi- mum of $632 for the season, though they can't deduct more than 10 percent of the gross pay on each check. The average studio apartment in Kelowna, by comparison, rents for $586 a month. What they can charge doesn't cover the rent, she said. It basically pays for utilities. Service Canada, the federal government department that oversees the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, acknowledges there are challenges with the program, but it was unable to provide anyone to inter- view for this article. Instead, the department's media officers provided a statement focusing on efforts to improve working conditions and wages, two hot topics among advocates of farmworkers' rights. Recent steps include, "applying better oversight regarding the genuineness of an offer of employment, granting more authority to the government to review the actions of employers, and, where warranted, denying employers access to temporary foreign workers for a period of two years, along with corresponding corrective action." Growers, however, are left to weigh the value they're getting for the program's many benefits—an equation that will be more pressing than ever in 2012. With few options left to cut costs or boost revenues, growers have little tolerance for greater costs. Or, as Hogue remarked, "It gets to the point where, when you have no bottom line to draw from, it makes it very difficult." • www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER APRIL 1, 2012 25