Southern Ontario is naturally moderate by the Great Lakes of Huron, Erie, and Ontario. This, coupled with productive soil, imparts a full spectrum of produce. Tender stone fruits and wine grapes flourish in the temperate Niagara Escarpment, while the south shore of Georgian Bay is apple country. If ranked by acreage, Ontario’s top fruits are grapes, apples, peaches, strawberries, and sour cherries.
The province’s thriving greenhouse industry in Leamington, Essex County, is a stone’s throw (just over 30 miles) from Detroit, Michigan, and is known worldwide for bumper crops of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. This bounty is shipped throughout Canada for interprovincial consumption and also exported to the United States.
Simone Weber, director of marketing and communication from the Ontario Produce Marketing Association, indicates Ontario is maximizing its agricultural agility, whether in open fields or under glass. “There are ongoing field research trials and test plots to explore which of the currently imported products can be grown in Canada in the future,” she states.
Quebec
Although Nunavut is Canada’s largest territory—at just under 2.1 million square kilometers or 21 percent of the country’s land mass—Quebec is the largest province measuring 1.3 million square kilometers (527,079 square miles) of land and 189.9 square kilometers (68,312 square miles) of freshwater areas.
Hilly regions in Quebec have different soil than their low-lying counterparts, as long-gone volcanoes made the hills an excellent growing venue for apple orchards. Apples are Canada’s top fruit crop, and Quebec’s acreage accounts for a third of the country’s total apple orchards.
The province’s flatlands, which have loamy rather than volcanic soil, are well suited to vegetable production. According to Quebec’s Ministry of Agriculture, the total value of vegetables grown in 2012 was $409 million, with $132 million of this total for potatoes alone. Another top crop was carrots; 2012’s harvest weighed in at about 440,000 tons, yet was smaller than both 2011 and 2010.
According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Quebec leads in cabbage production for the nation, and a good portion of its vegetable offerings are shipped to the United States, valued at more than $150 million annually.
Sophie Perreault of the Quebec Produce Marketing Association has identified three major trends in the province: local, organic, and packaged fruits and vegetables. The local seasonal market tends to be rather robust: “Commodities such as strawberries, apples, root vegetables, cabbages, squash, as well as peaches and plums from the Ontario region, all do very well.”
