GIPAANDA GREENHOUSES: Growing a family and a farm

Tomato farmers David and Sarah Ryall know how to grow a family and business at the same time.

David Ryall knew he always wanted to farm. The Surrey, B.C., native thought he’d head into cattle farming. But after graduating from high school, a neighbour with a vegetable greenhouse suggested he try some time inside. So taken with the technology and energy of greenhouse growing, David and his father, John, a high school science teacher with an agriculture degree, began their own greenhouse operation.

“I wanted to farm ever since I could talk,” David says. “It’s just in the genes.”

In 1970, the two started Gipaanda Greenhouses Ltd., growing tomatoes and chrysanthemums. They later moved to rotating cucumbers and pepper crops with tomatoes. The name Gipaanda comes from the first two letters of each of John Ryall's children’s first names.

David and John were at the forefront of B.C.’s vegetable greenhouse sector. They helped create the first cooperative marketing association in 1973. Since then, they have both served on the board of the marketing association for extensive periods of time. David met Sarah, the daughter of greenhouse cucumber grower in England, while visiting England on a research trip. She worked as an advisor to growers on plant nutrition.

He proposed, and she followed him to British Columbia. The two began planning a wedding in 1981 while harvesting their crops and building a new glass greenhouse for Gipaanda. In 1996, the couple opened up an 18-acre tomato greenhouse in Ladner, where the climate is better for greenhouse growing and there was less urbanization encroaching on farmland.

They’ve grown their greenhouse to 130 employees and moved into more than five different varieties of tomatoes, including Campari, roma, mini roma and cherry tomatoes - all “on the vine” varieties - as well as beefsteak tomatoes.

The Ryalls, like other greenhouse growers, use the latest technologies in computer and Integrated Pest Management to produce perfect-tasting and healthy tomatoes.

“I just like the energy you get and the science you get. We’re always on the edge of technology, not unlike other farmers,” says David, who also sits on the boards of the Delta Farmers’ Institute and BC Hot House Foods Inc.

Sarah, who is a board and committee member of the BC Greenhouse Growers’ Association, agrees. Greenhouse growers are producing food for the world and their own tables.

“You want to be proud of what you’re growing,” she says. “I love to eat what we grow.”

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