BC Vegetable Marketing Commission licence

Only certain vegetables are regulated: storage crops (potatoes, carrots and beets with tops off, green and red cabbage, parsnips, rutabaga, white turnips, yellow onions), greenhouse cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes, and crops grown for processing (beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, corn, peas, strawberries). Growing 1 tonne or more of them a year makes you a producer who needs a licence and sells through a designated agency — except direct to consumers from the farm, a farmers’ market or an authorised roadside stand, graded, up to 300 lb of storage crops or 60 lb of greenhouse crops per customer per day. Producer-shippers, small-scale producers and certified-organic growers have exceptions, and the Commission can approve some specialty and direct-to-retailer sales. Most market-garden crops are not on the list.