DRC reviews progress at 2026 AGM

Jul 14, 2026

The Fruit and Vegetable Dispute Resolution Corporation (DRC) convened a successful Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Victoria, British Columbia, on Thursday, May 28, 2026. The AGM brought together DRC members, senior staff, and Board of Directors both in person and virtually to review achievements, discuss ongoing initiatives, and outline the organization’s strategic direction for the coming year. Bret Erickson, Little Bear Produce Ltd., Edinburg, Texas, continues to chair the board.

With 12 Directors on the Board, each serving a three-year term, Pierre Dolbec and Bruce Summers were re-elected as Directors. The Board will continue its efforts to enhance the fruit and vegetable industry by ensuring fair and ethical trade for all DRC members.

“We are proud to welcome our returning Directors,” said Luc Mougeot, DRC’s president and CEO. “Their leadership helps guide the DRC as we continue to support our members. Our primary goal is clear: to establish the DRC as the global trade standards body and dispute resolution mechanism for the fresh fruit and vegetable industry.”

Click here to see more...

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators