MARKET REPORT AUG. 7TH, 2015 – A MILESTONE FOR US

AND A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU!

Annie and I started this business at the end of February, 1998.  Our mission was to bring small local producers fruit and vegetables to market who hadn’t been able to enter the commercial wholesale marketplace in the past.We shipped in fruit from Organics Plus in Cawston, melons and carrots from Audrey Cliffe, root crops from the N. Okanagan, potatoes from Pemberton, and picked up local greens from Glen Valley, Snow Farm, Olera Farm and many others – then re-organized it on borrowed space at truck depot loading docks and delivered it the next day in an old Suburban and an even older F250 pickup.  I still have keys to both those trucks on my key ring – a little memento of those days.  We stored our grains and Omega Oil which we used to distribute in a rented tractor trailer parked on an abandoned railway siding.  Oh those were the days!  On alternating days we delivered across Vancouver Island.  We ran the business from a spare bedroom in our rented apartment in Burnaby, while raising 6, yes 6 teenagers in the same little house.In 2001 (or so) we rented a small space on Hastings Street with a 1,000 square foot cooler and an old pup reefer trailer, and bought our first old 5 ton truck.    Those were long days – often getting up at 4:00, catching the first ferry from Horseshoe Bay, driving north to Campbell River, unloading at stores down the Island, catching a dinner-time ferry from Victoria, and then picking up at farms on the way back to the warehouse – those were 18 hour days, and there were weeks when Annie and I worked over 160 hours between us.In that time, I also started farming – 20 acres in the Fraser Valley, primarily to give Discovery more product to sell, especially things like leeks, garlic and Brussels Sprouts that no one else was growing.  We did that for 4 years – the last year Discovery was getting too busy, and Stefan took over the farm, and a year later started working full time at Discovery, and he’s still here as senior buyer, working with small producers across BC and south to Northern Mexico, 11 years later.In 2005 we moved to our present location on Kaslo Street.  At that time we were only selling B.C. produce, and by February or March our price list was very, very small - the last of Bruce’s potatoes, the last of Trevor’s apples, and a small assortment of root crops, but we had more expenses and a small staff of 6 people to pay year-round.  We began bringing in small amounts of produce from the West Coast – Oregon and California.  Often this product was coming from other organic wholesalers in Seattle and Portland helping us out - because we didn’t have the buying power to go direct to farmers.  During the spring of 2006 we started importing our own full trucks, the first of many milestones.  A lot of that product was from small growers and grower cooperatives, as well as Mexican tomatoes and cucumbers bought through brokers in Los Angeles.We made our first trip to Mexico in 2007 – mostly to find out how the produce world worked on that side of the border, and we found it out it could be really ugly for small producers.That fall we brought in our first sea container from central Mexico – Marcelino’s grapefruit and the first shipment of Fairtrade avocados.  And we kept on growing, increasing staff, selection, services and a wider range of products.  All the while we continued expanding our relationships with small producers in B.C.  We remember celebrating that year that we were working with over 50 small producers across the province, either individually, or through cooperatives.In 2008 we made our first trip to Peru on a quest for mangos and bananas, and three trips later we imported the first container of bananas from BOS Coop in Peru in May of 2009 – their first direct export of bananas, having sold everything to multi-nationals before that.  Since that time we have been to Peru and Ecuador 2 or 3 times a year – 15 trips to date, establishing trading relationships with mango, ginger and avocado producers, fostering on-going friendships and looking first-hand at the social projects fueled by social premiums.Our sales of Fairtrade products have raised well over $750,000 for community work in small towns and villages across Mexico, in Chile, Argentina and especially northern Peru – the poorest area we purchase from.  We are not going to take the credit for this – you have all been supportive of these programs, and have been the ones who sold the product that generated those social premiums, and dramatically changed the lifestyles of thousands of families -  improved working conditions, raised wages and put smiles on faces of people who are much more empowered.  Many of you were also involved in three separate emergency funding projects that saw us able to get over $30,000 rushed to Chile to re-build worker housing destroyed in that disastrous earthquake, $25,000 and a follow-up $5,000 for emergency funding for growers in Northern Peru after a devastating flood, first to re-build schools, and second to restore dikes to protect some of the BOS banana growers from future flooding.  This was mostly your money and effort that did this!  For those of you directly involved in these programs, you know who you are!Often on these adventures to Latin America we talk to growers and workers.  One small avocado producer in Peru with just 100 trees told us that he used to only be able to buy just one pair of new shoes for his kids a year – and always for the one with the biggest feet, but now with a better income he could buy them all new shoes every year. Just a little snippet of a story, and no big deal for you or I, but huge impact for kids always wearing hand-me-downs.We have taken many of our staff and over 15 customers on some of these trips south, with many days involving tears of either despair or joy – most often joy.  Some have literally been the best days of our lives – seeing how a few tens of thousands of dollars have had such positive impacts.It all seems like a distant memory since we started down that road, but it was well worth it - and now we have become the go-to for Fairtrade fruit and vegetables from Mexico to Chile.  It has taken a huge amount of work to slowly develop solid relationships with these producers – including over 50 trips to Mexico, not just sourcing products, but also maintaining relationships with growers who have become friends and allies.Since 2013 we have been renting extra space in other people’s coolers, plugged in sea containers, etc., while we hunted for a new home – a daunting task in a city with very little available space.   We could have moved to the suburbs, but considering 50% of our staff walk or ride their bikes to work we had to focus on finding a new home close to our present location.Finally a few months ago we found a new home – nearly the perfect size, and only a few km. away, on Malkin Avenue – the produce hub here in Vancouver.   And we are moving RIGHT NOW!We couldn’t have possibly grown from a Mom and Pop business operating from a bedroom and pickup truck to where we are without the support of all our customers, big and small, across Western Canada.We thank you all so much for the friendships and long-standing relationships we have created with you over these many, many years, and hope we can only serve you better from a much larger building.Thanks!Randy and Annie and the entire Discovery Team!For every one of you who has been on this path with us, here are a few pictures from the archives to remind you how important you are to us, to the grower communities we work in, and a reminder of your own generosity on our extra fund-raising campaigns!  Thanks!Every 6 months, before and after the mango season is over, we visit the Agrovida coop in Pedregal de Alto in northern Peru.  After every meeting (assembly of growers) to review the previous season and plans for next year, we have a soccer game on their very un-even field in the center of the village.  Last game was Peru 4 - Canada 3 and the multi-year series is currently a tie.  As Randy demonstrates, height is often no advantage!  That soccer ball was a gift from one of our customers to Agrovida – a Fair Trade soccer ball that has only come out of the locked filing cabinet in their little meeting room 10 times.     In the small town of Saltiral Peru, summer vacation starts at Christmas and runs through Easter.  Kids have nothing to do.  One of our best memories is having 1,100 kids perform traditional dances, sing, and display handicrafts crafted from used plastic water bottles for us all at a 6 week summer school for the whole town organized by the BOS Banana Coop and financed by Discovery and two banana importers in Europe.  The highlight for the kids was a bus trip to the ocean 100 km. away.  Many of them had never seen waves or sandy beaches.    Sean McHugh, director of the Canadian Fair Trade Network surveys banana plantations under water after the worst flood in Peru’s history.  Emergency funding helped re-build dikes and roads for these lowland growers in northern Peru.  7 different coops across the region used money you helped raise to rebuild schools knocked down by raging rivers.These young men are indigenous Mexicans who live in the very dangerous avocado growing regions of Michoacan.  Most of them have lost one or both parents, and could so easily be sucked into the illicit drug trade and lives of violence.  Instead, they get together three times a week to play and learn music, influenced by their own traditional rhythmns.  Social premiuims from your avocado sales pay for a music teacher, practice space and their musical instruments.  And they are awesome….and very loud!Late in February of 2010 a massive earthquake devested central Chile.  Within 3 weeks retailers across Western Canada donated, through sales or out-of-pocket, over $30,000, and that with an additional $13,000 of social premiums generated through Fairtrade blueberry sales at that time went to the Green Tribe coop in Chile.  Their members drove to small towns in the regioin distributing fresh produce, cooking oil, pasta and potable water. Again, Thank You!