BCFGA Annual Meeting

Hundreds of fruit growers will be packing into the Penticton Lakeside Resort this weekend.

The B.C. Fruit Grower's Association is holding its annual meeting Saturday.

General Manager for the BCFGA, Glen Lucas, says the length of the meeting has been reduced.

"We normally spend a day and a half, but this year are just taking one day for the meeting. We are trying to make better use of our member's time,"
says Lucas.

He says they are streamlining the meeting by doing some things in advance.

"We are talking about the budget with our members beforehand, so at the meeting we don't have to spend a lot of time going over the material because everyone will be familiar with it already," says Lucas.

He says the big item this year is industry strategy.

"We have been working on it for the last nine months, we've consulted with growers, other organizations, it's been quite a process. We have come up with five main issues to focus on, industry structure, quality, marketing, labour and new fruit varieties. What will be new to the growers and the public are the actions we are going to be taking in each of those areas,"
says Lucas.

He says one of the actions will be to establish an implementation committee which will meet quarterly to report to the industry organizations on strategy developments.

"Another example is we are planning to initiate a worker housing program. We don't have much local labour available, we are making greater use of workers from other countries. Because they don't live here, it's a requirement of their government that we take care of these workers," says Lucas.

He says despite a labour shortage, it has been a fairly good year for growers.

"We've had a couple of tough years, but the market returns for the '06 crop are looking good so far," says Lucas