After 164 migrant workers at an Ontario asparagus farm tested positive for COVID-19 about halfway through harvest season, farm leaders worked with the local health department to contain the spread.
The farmworkers were employed by Scotlynn Group in Vittoria, Ontario, which lost close to 450 acres of unharvested asparagus, said Bernie Solymar, executive director of Asparagus Farmers of Ontario. Scotlynn did not reply to e-mails in time for publishing and calls were redirected.
The lack of skilled workers to harvest the crop caused a loss of 8-10% of the province’s more than 3,700 acres of asparagus, he said.
“We obviously feel for these workers and wish them all the best to get well and hope they can stay and work and finish out the harvest season,” Solymar said. “The reality is, it has very little impact on the supply chain. We can easily fill our stores with other asparagus. There’s no need to go to Peruvian or Mexican asparagus, both the U.S. and Canada’s biggest competition. We have enough supply for Ontario, elsewhere in Canada and the U.S.”
About 70% of the province’s asparagus is grown in southern Ontario’s Norfolk County, which is just north of Michigan.
Four of the workers remained hospitalized, two of whom were in intensive care, according to a June 4 news release from the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit.
The hospital announced the outbreak June 1, also reporting 53 negative tests.
The workers are self-isolating at hotels and on-farm bunkhouses.
At the hotels, they are ordered to stay in their rooms, with hotel staff avoiding contact and health care workers checking on them daily, according to the health unit.
Health unit staff have tested 100 people in the community who have had contact with the employees, reporting four positive cases.
Staff at Mike’s No Frills supermarket in Port Dover — which opens an hour early for migrant workers to shop — have been tested for COVID-19 out of an abundance of caution. All of the tests were negative, according to the health unit.
The Canadian federal government requires agricultural workers arriving from out of country to complete a 14-day period of self-isolation, according to the health unit and Solymar. Some complete their self-isolation period at on-farm housing.
The health unit confirmed the original farmworker who tested positive was from another area farm and is now self-isolating in another residence.
This outbreak is the latest setback in a tumultuous asparagus season, Solymar said.
Norfolk has stricter incoming migrant farmworker isolation rules than other counties, Solymar said, limiting the bunkhouses to no more than three people during the initial isolation period when workers arrive to Canada.
The bunkhouses are built for 40 to 50 people, so the area was already short on farmworkers this season.
Some growers isolated incoming workers outside the county in hotels or trailer homes for two weeks, Solymar said.
Most growers haven’t have enough help for harvesting this season.
“Some growers said ‘Heck with it, we’re not harvesting this year,’ so we lost a few 100 acres that way. And some growers said they’d harvest only half of what they had,” he said.
Norfolk’s asaragus season typically runs the first week of May through the third week of June, although some harvesters will go to the start of July.
Growers started harvesting about two weeks late, however, because of three consecutive frosts in May. Then came a heat wave, “which brought on asparagus like gangbusters,” Solymar said.
“So we went from an emplty pipeline with none in the stores, to a flood, or what we call a flush, of asparagus,” he said.
All the grower and packer coolers filled up, but with the rush of asparagus, prices dropped.
And with less frequent shopping trips during the pandemic as people stay home, sales have flattened that way too, he said.
Third-generation growers told Solymar they’ve never had a year like this before.
“It has been a real rollercoaster of a year,” Solymar said.
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