Peak of the Market (formerly the Manitoba Vegetable Producers’ Marketing Board) is a farmer-owned marketing board which sells Manitoba-grown vegetables in Canada, the United States and occasionally overseas.
Peak (as it’s commonly called) operates under the Manitoba Farm Products Marketing Act, along with other provincial marketing boards for milk, eggs, chicken and turkey, which are supply-managed commodities.
Peak is quasi-supply management, controlling production for table potatoes (russets, reds and yellow-fleshed) and other root crops (carrots, onions, parsnips and rutabagas). Farmers require quota from the board to grow these crops. The minimum required quota for potatoes is 6,000 bags.
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Until recently, small growers with four acres or fewer were usually treated as exempt from the rule. However, the four-acre rule was eliminated in 2009. Peak has signalled its intention to bring those growers under its umbrella while still allowing them to sell to roadside stands and farmers’ markets, as they do now.
Potatoes from regulated (quota-holding) producers are sold into two markets: a price-pooled market consisting of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and northern Ontario; and a so-called direct-pricing market outside the pool region.
