John Rustad meets with troubled fruit growers

growers in the Okanagan have faced some difficult challenges with weather low crops and now the failure of the BC tree fruits Cooperative so they want a lot of help not just from a future John rustad government but help right now we need this now not not November December the fruit industry is in real trouble it needs government support it needs government to step up to the plate and value our agricultural sector it needs to make sure that you have a government that can be responsive to the changes of things that are like what's happening in the industry that's not happening today we as a conservative party want to make sure that doesn't happen again in the future and that government is there to be able to support a vibrant agriculture sector I think the general consensus was to just have Growers be able to come out and have a voice you know with everything that's going on right now it's uh it's sad it's it's really sad to see what's happening to the industry um and I think this is an opportunity for people to come out and be heard you know whether they agree with the party or not um agree with different policies of different parties at least they have a voice and I think that's important the Packers that are out there including ourselves we're going to do everything we can to help Growers but we do have our limitations you know you can't just take in a bunch of fruit and then not return a decent return to the Growers and the grower families so you have to manage it properly um but a lot of Growers are really really worried I I don't blame them they got fruit hanging on their trees right now and I I think some of them probably don't even have bins to put their fruit into and that's a concern it really is we have this BC tree fruits collapse going going on some people are saying they need cash now you support that I think quite frankly what we need to be doing is we need to be looking at how we're doubling our food production in BC and we need to so if that has to obviously be part of the current mix in terms of people we need we can't double our food production if we're losing people out of the sector so government needs to step up to the plate and look at how we can change things long term to make sure that there things are viable how we drive down those costs but make sure that you know people that are are dedicated and hardworking in the industry have that opportunity to able to be here government needs to step in and be able to help for sure