Soggy soil sinks strawberry season in Quebec

Marketed production of strawberries sagged in the spring and summer of 2023, as a result of soggy soil in Quebec, home to almost half of Canada’s strawberry fields.

Strawberries are the first fruit to ripen during our short growing season and perhaps the most anticipated. They are also Canada’s fifth most important fruit crop in terms of marketed production, following apples, blueberries, cranberries and grapes.

Canadian farmers harvested 22 012 tonnes of strawberries in 2023, the lowest level in a decade.

The decline was almost entirely due to Quebec, where marketed production declined 12.7% to 12 418 tonnes. Quebec is by far the biggest strawberry-producing province nationally; its marketed production is over double that of the neighbouring province of Ontario and is almost 10 times larger than that of British Columbia, which ranks third.

In 2023, Quebec accounted for 56.4% of Canada’s total strawberry marketed production.

Strawberry marketed production rose in Ontario (+0.2% to 5 531 tonnes) and British Columbia (+2.5% to 1 363 tonnes).

We counted 1,955 farms reporting growing strawberries during the 2021 Census of Agriculture. Strawberry fields covered 4 197 hectares; an area 10 times larger than Stanley Park in Vancouver. Almost half of the strawberry field area in 2021 was in Quebec.

There were farms reporting growing strawberries in every province, ranging from 23 in Prince Edward Island to 524 in Ontario.