Celebrating 30 Years
The PEI Horticultural Association is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
The original founding farms are all still in operation. However, two founding members have since passed away – Patrick Ryan and Bernard Shea, both wonderful men and farmers.
The Association was established to give vegetable and fruit producers a voice on P.E.I., and enable group initiatives to move our sector forward. We are a non-profit organization representing individual producers, grower Associations, grower co-operatives and agri-business associated with horticulture. Our main goal is the promotion and support of the Island horticultural industry by supporting initiatives which encourage profitable production, effective promotion systems and by providing support services in the area of research and development, and extension.
The Associations first project, in collaboration with the PEI Vegetable Growers Co-operative, was to investigate, adapt and deliver an Integrated Pest Management service to vegetable producers. The vegetable sector was the first to offer an IPM Program on PEI, which is still going strong 29 years later.
The program has been expanded over the years to apple, fruit and cranberry crops. The Association, in collaboration with Island Apple growers and the PEI Department of Agriculture, developed a PEI Ecological Fruit Production protocol in 2002.
Another important initiative is the vegetable cultivar trials, started in 1986 in collaboration with Jack Cutcliffe of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Jack supported the PEI vegetable sector throughout his career, carrying out research on vegetable cultivars and nutrition. With AAFC ceasing work on vegetable cultivars in Atlantic Canada, the Association membership deemed this area of work as a major priority taking over where Jack left off.
Over the years the cultivar trials have taken on new perspectives as production demanded and commercial crops changed. In the early years, crops such as tomatoes, squash, corn and peppers were evaluated. In recent years, cole crops, lettuce, and carrots have been the focus. Aspects of cultivars researched have included response to reduced tillage, reduced spacing, plastic mulch and inherent tolerance/resistance traits moving from research sites to on-farm evaluation trials. The Association has worked in collaboration with growers and Vesey’s Seeds, with funding from the Agricultural Research Investment Fund and the PEI ADAPT Council.
Other areas of research completed range from insect trapping systems, pest pathogen control, trap cropping and crop nutrition. All research has been done in partnership with growers, industry, provincial government, and/or federal government on behalf of our members.
We have also taken on projects outside the realm of crop production such as the school lunch/snack program. This project was first discussed by our membership in 2005. Work started in 2007 with 2009 seeing the completion of a protocol for delivery to Island schools.
On-Farm Food Safety is nothing new to the horticulture sector. The need for a trace-back and record keeping system first arose in 1999, with our rutabaga and cabbage producers for their export markets. This demand initiated our first project and since that time has expanded in scope to all horticulture producers, for both domestic and export markets. The Association has been working with Canadian Horticultural Council in the development of programs and grower training on the CHC CanadaGAP Program.
