Vince Kuipers’ grandparents emigrated from Holland to Kelowna in 1921 when they started orcharding, eventually passing the knowledge down to his parents.
Today, Kuipers owns a fruit-picking family business, Kuipers Fruit Family Farm in Kelowna, that has had a rough few years with extreme weather events killing crops in the Okanagan.
“I grew up in the orchard,” he said, noting that orcharding has been his full-time job since 2015.
He is among many fruit growers in the area who are celebrating their first bountiful harvest in several years, thanks to all the right growing conditions this year.
Okanagan fruit growers celebrate big harvest after years of losses
As for this year’s harvest, he says that “this year is the best year I would say so far.”
He says that last year “was very disappointing,” with a mild winter contributing to crops failing. The past few years have been the worst crop failure in his lifetime, he says.
Jennay Oliver, who owns and operates Paynter’s Fruit Market in the Okanagan, says that this year’s weather “was perfect. It was mild. It wasn’t extreme, and we had crops on everything.”
Heat domes and winter cold snaps have contributed to crop failure, with B.C. farmers not turning a profit since 2017, according to Statistics Canada.
“It’s pretty easy to want to quit when you have these couple of bad seasons in a row, I think this season has kind of pulled everybody back together,” Oliver said.
Despite the harvest, farmers and scientists say that this type of year is rare and are preparing for future hardships with Okanagan crops.
Agriculture Canada researcher Kirsten Hannam is looking into innovative ways to protect orchards from a changing climate.
One example is using retractable shutters to protect trees from hail or intense sunlight.
She says that climate adaptability and resilience are incredibly important to include in future studies about climate change and orchards.
Kuipers says that he is not overly concerned about climate change.
“You have good years and bad years. You can mitigate against that the best you can, but I try to have a positive outlook on it.”
“I’m not overly concerned, but at the same time, you just gotta be prepared that if there is another cold spell, it can be disappointing,” he said.
Hannam says that fruit growers are reaching out to researchers to ask different questions about how they can make their orchards more resilient to extreme weather.
“We have such a great relationship with the farmers who work in the valley. We have lots of communication with them, which really benefits our research,” she said.
Oliver says that fruit growers she has spoken to are encouraged following this year’s harvest.
