CPMA president urges industry to shake things up in state of Canadian produce address

TORONTO — Attendees settling in for lunch at this this year’s Canadian Produce Marketing Association conference were jolted alert by strobing lights as CPMA President Ron Lemaire took the stage, urging attendees to stand up quickly and shake off the dust.

As the jostled audience got its bearings, Lemaire probed the standing crowd in his April 26 luncheon keynote at CPMA’s Convention and Trade Show at The Metro Toronto Convention Center.

“Hasn’t the last year felt like this?” Lemaire asked the audience of fresh produce industry members. “Isn’t this last year a bit like being thunderstruck?”

In his clear-eyed keynote and state of the industry address, Lemaire outlined a range of challenges, changes and opportunities he believes the fresh produce industry faces in the year ahead in Canada and beyond. He pressed the audience to not simply embrace these rapid-fire changes, but to mature, disrupt, shake up and reinvent.

“Growth is optional,” Lemaire said to the audience hailing from as close as Quebec City, Ontario, and as far as New Zealand. “Just because you're changing, doesn't mean you're doing anything to grow and drive your business.”

To Lemaire, the foundation of a thriving produce industry and business success starts by focusing on what individuals need to do to drive growth and change in their businesses and personal lives.

“I want you to leave here today to be a disrupter,” he said. “I want you to go out in your business, on the trade show floor — look at the world differently and look at how you can change, not only for your business, but for yourselves and for the industry.”

The present cultural moment, according to the CPMA president, often feels like everything is coming all at once. How people respond, react and cast aside what is no longer serving them is key to thriving today.  

“Coming out of the pandemic … we sat down and we started realizing right now we're dealing with everything everywhere, all at once. We saw some of us in an office at home on Zoom ... You know, we're saying virtual parliament,” Lemaire said. “Now all of a sudden, we're here, and thank God we're face to face. We're trying to get back into that face-to-face engagement, personal engagement, but the Zoom calls haven't disappeared. The technology is still there, and what are we doing to link that in and how are we leveraging that legacy that we're now enjoying from technology from the pandemic and driving it into the business moving forward? This is the key on our time now.”

Drawing inspiration from the music industry, Lemaire shared how to one person, a giant setback could be a huge opportunity to another.

“Drake and The Weeknd’s voices were deepfaked," he said, referring to the method of making a fabricated digital presentation that seems realistic. "The music was put out everyone thought they dropped a new song. The music industry went crazy. 

“Well then what happens?" he continued. "[Canadian musician] Grimes comes up and immediately goes public saying if there's anyone out there that wants a deepfake by her voice and leverage this to drive creativity, ‘I'll give you 50%.’”

Suddenly, you're taking a negative and leveraging it into an opportunity to drive change in the market, LeMaire added.

Disrupting business-as-usual in fresh produce 

The change-making issues, challenges and opportunities Lemaire sees for the fresh produce industry in 2023 include:

• Embracing the new hybrid world that includes both in-person and virtual communication.

• Finding opportunities in changing consumer behavior that now includes "split brain" and "revenge" spending.

• Coping with food inflation.

• Advocating for favorable Canadian policies on labor and immigration, along with passing Bill C-280 establishing financial protection for produce sellers in Canada.

• Embracing opportunities in artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT and Bard.

• Adopting cybersecurity plans to safeguard against technology’s dark side, which includes deepfakes and hacks.

• Responding to and mitigating climate change and coping with severe weather events that disrupt supply chains.

• Pioneering, innovating and marketing sustainability issues, such as regenerative agriculture, energy, packaging (like compostable PLU stickers) and plastics education.

• Learning about and marketing to Generation Z consumers.

“Gen Z [are] the first real truly digital natives. They are going to shift everything because they are pragmatic, they're financially minded, they're shrewd consumers. They're really driving home on a political agenda, both on the left on the right side,” Lemaire said. “And at the end, they're also turning around and they're taking the piece that we've forgotten over time about the mental health elements.”

What Gen Z values is already shifting how the industry needs to do business, how it positions products and what the total landscape looks like moving forward, he continued.

“So, are we going to be happy with status quo? Are we going to accept where Gen Z is going?” Lemaire asked.