I dunno. Here are some of these hardworking guys planting Frind’s industrial vineyard in Vernon.

It’s hard to say, isn’t it. Wine, a tourist product, sold at about $22 a bottle, may or may not be “feeding the Okanagan.” Let’s look from a different angle. Below, we can see the newest planting of an industrial cherry conglomerate from Lake Country. They hire 150 foreign workers a year. That’s got to be feeding the Okanagan.

Ah, but no. The cherries are sold to China. No, to eat, I’m afraid we’re going to have to buy food from industrial American farms in Mexico. So, I think the question stands, do temporary foreign workers feed the Okanagan? Maybe it’s the wrong question. Maybe the right question is: does the availability of temporary foreign workers ensure the continuation of industrial agriculture and an elite plantation owner class? We could, after all, have year-round employees, but in the winter they’d have to be part of the management or wine-making crew, and, well, you simply can’t have an elite management class serving an elite ownership class if you don’t have temporary workers. It’s just how it is.

Hey, I know! We could make salad out of that mustard!

Ah, no. It would be bitter. Nice thought, though.