Lessons in Food Security from Canada

Nick Hughes

As experts continue to question the resilience of the UK’s food system amid geopolitical turmoil and weather extremes, Canada has forged ahead with developing a new national food security strategy. The document explicitly positions food security as national security and sets out how Canada plans to assert greater control over its food supply through investment in domestic production and infrastructure. In this week’s episode Nick is joined by Sid Mehta, an expert in Canada’s food system with experience working across the foodservice, policy and consultancy spheres. Sid provides the background to Canada’s food system and explains the context behind the new food security strategy, the political economy that has shaped it, and what it tells us about the risk of relying on others to feed us in an increasingly volatile world.

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Transcript

Nick Hughes: Hello and welcome to the Small Print, a podcast by Footprint Media Group. I’m Nick Hughes, Footprint’s editorial director. Each week we delve beneath the headlines of an issue impacting the hospitality and food service sector through our unique lens of environmental and social affairs. As experts continue to question the resilience of the UK’s food system amid geopolitical turmoil and weather extremes, Canada has forged ahead with developing a new national food security strategy. The document explicitly positions food security as national security and sets out how Canada plans to assert greater control over its food supply through investment in domestic production and infrastructure. In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Sid Mehta, an expert in Canada’s food system with experience working across the food service policy and consultancy spheres. Sid provides the background to Canada’s food system and explains the context behind the new food security strategy, the political economy that has shaped it, and what it tells us about the risk of relying on others to feed us in an increasingly volatile world. Sid, welcome to the Small Print. It’s a pleasure to have you join us. Perhaps you can start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and your experiences working within food systems.

Sid Mehta: Hey, Nick, thanks a lot for having me. Sid here. I’m a founder of two companies, Greenworks and niha, based in Canada on the west coast in Vancouver. But my journey in food has been a lifelong journey. Grew up on a farm. Parents, grandparents are farmers. Alfonso Mango. If you know the mango world, Alfonso Mango was our farm. Got into the restaurant business in India for more than 15 years before moving to Canada and in Canada. And I kind of played four kind of different, you know, over the last 25 years. Four unique roles or experiences. Spent 10 years in food services with Compass Group, several roles in operations. But the last five years were with the C suite in Canada, really leading the strategy around innovation, culinary and sustainability. Moved, felt the need to move to policy world. Had the itch always to figure out how policies can. Policies are kind of a little bit of this big bets and so, you know, worked in the UN ecosystem across the four UN hubs, New York, Niagara Beach, Levi And Rome, came back to academia, worked at Simon Fraser University, fairly large university on the west coast, looking after all of their business services, including their food program, which in the last year that I left sfu was awarded the best food program in North America. And so we did quite a bit from the ground up. When I got there, we built the program from the structure as well as the program itself. And then I realized quickly at sfu, I founded the Climate Action Labs, really trying to translate research and bring operations together to deliver impact. But I quickly started to realize that none of these four experiences would let me do all the other three as well. So I kind of always felt boxed in to either do one or two, but not all four. And so having all of this experience, I felt the only way to now get to do the all four would be to then do my own, get back to entrepreneurship. And so hence the two organizations. Greenworks really works at the intersection of the four worlds I work in and try to bring those four worlds into Deliver Impact. And then on the neha, which is a co founded company with a chef, indigenous chef from the Northwest Territories or from the Arctic. Our work in NEHA is to really bring more indigenous food knowledge and culture into public life. It is just largely missing. And so we work together to deliver that. And she’s the real force and I kind of bring the systems thinking behind it. And so between the two keeps me busy. Happy to share a bit more about what’s happening in Canada?

Nick Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. So as you allude to, today’s podcast is a bit of a departure from our normal content because we’re going to explore food policy in another country altogether, specifically Canada. And the reason we’re doing so is the Canadian government has just published a food security strategy that I think is very relevant to the discussions we are having here in the UK around food security and the resilience of our current food system in a world of volatile geopolitics and extreme weather and other challenges that are being faced across the globe. So before we get into the details, sort of the strategy itself, let’s try and give listeners a bit of context around Canada’s food system. How would you characterize it? What, what, what features does it share with other developed economies? And are there any features unique to Canada?

Sid Mehta: Yeah, I think Canada, I mean, let me start just by framing that Canada is a bit of a paradox when it comes to food. I think, you know, we represent around maybe 0.5% of the world’s population and we export around $100 billion worth of agri, food and seafood exports, crops. It represents around 150 billion, $50 billion in GDP and 2.4 million people work in the sector. And so we’ve been predominantly an export driven food systems. We have short growing seasons which really has made our farmers extremely resilient to climate, extremely sustainable when it comes to their practices. But it’s also a humble ecosystem, so we punch above our weight when it comes to exports. Our entire ecosystem is built around our exports. And so exports would be 90% of canola, 95% of pulses, 75% of wheat, pork, beef, soybeans, third largest exporter of mushrooms. And I can go on. In terms of what we share with growing economies, developed economies, I think we share similar value values and systems, more or less. You know, you think about Australia, think about the U.S. think about U.K. you know, we have a really, especially under the current administration, our engagement with Europe and, and your UK have really heightened and, and so there’s a lot of back and forth going on and, and in, in that sense when we have discussions with Europeans or with uk, I think there is a lot of alignment on policy, there’s a lot of alignment on, on, on the practices that probably will make our systems more resilient. But in terms of scale, I think there’s a huge difference. You know, that’s where we tend to align better with the U.S. and I can speak a little bit about the

Nick Hughes: U.S. yeah, no, that is a useful context. And let’s speak about the U.S. because you know, this relationship with your near neighbor is obviously, you know, the, the supply chains are interwoven between the two countries. There’s, there’s some statistics in the, in the plan that there’s food security strategy itself that, you know, U.S. accounts for over 60% of Canadian agri food exports and more than half of its imports. So it’s, it’s absolutely critical. But clearly we’re also in a place where there are some political tensions between the two countries. I think it’s fair to say trade policies deployed by the US are also impacting Canada either directly or indirectly through food being imported into the US and then ending up in Canadian value chain. So how would you, you know, characterize that relationship currently? And, and I guess how has that relationship do you feel shaped Canada’s needs to feel like it needs to create this new strategy?

Sid Mehta: It’s the question of the hour. Lots of, you know, insights and discussions around this in my view on the ground. I think there’s a few, few layers to this one. You know, as you rightly said the US Canada markets are highly integrated. I mean, you know, 80% of our pork probably goes into the US gets value added and comes back into Canada. And that’s not just, you know, the agriculture sector. Automobile is probably another one that’s highly integrated. And so, you know, if you think about US farmers, 80% of their inputs come from Canada. Canada is the second largest producer of potash, which is an input into the US Agriculture systems. And so if you think about it as a highly integrated ecosystem and a highly productive ecosystem, and I think the relationships are still there and that business continues. However, I think over the last 24 years, Canada has realized, especially under the current administration, that it’s not good business to have one amazing client in any business. And so we need diversification. Now. Sometimes you need a shock. I mean, having the largest economy literally 15 minutes from my house is an amazing thing to have. We get complacent and we get comfortable. Also, the dollar is just so much, so much more valued compared to the Canadian dollar, the US Dollar valued so much more that we, you know, for every Canadian dollar that we do trade, we get a dollar and 40 cents back. And so there’s a huge 30 to 40% benefit when we start exporting to and working with the U.S. but I think this last 24 months, I think, has really woken up Canada to say, listen, we just can’t rely on one good client. We need three good clients or four good clients and four good partners. And so that thinking has come quite a bit from the Carney government. And they’ve brought this real sense of diversification and diversification where it makes sense, diversification where it doesn’t make sense. So the renewed relationship with China, the renewed relationship with India, heading to India in a couple of weeks. And so there’s a. So that’s kind of what’s going on. And I’m happy to dig a little bit deeper into what that means and how that connects to the strategy.

Nick Hughes: Yes, well, well, let’s, let’s try and summarize the strategy. I suspect most footprint listeners will probably not have read it. It’s not a long document, is it? It’s only 27 pages or so. So I’ll try and summarize it. And Sid, please do build on these, these thoughts. It strikes me as quite explicitly positioning food security as national security, with a clear framing around Canada’s desire to assert greater control and sovereignty over its food supply. I would say, I think the purpose is summed up quite neatly with the line in the Strategy, it means growing, processing and selling more of our food here so Canadians aren’t paying the price every time something goes wrong somewhere else. And by somewhere else, we can read into that the conflict in Iran, the war in Ukraine, perhaps even the strained relationship with the US that you’ve just alluded to. In terms of specifics, there’s a focus on growing domestic production capacity and supply chain infrastructure, moving away somewhat from the highly centralized consolidated supply chains that have come to dominate Western food economies certainly have in the UK to something more distributed that gives greater access and agency to farmers and SMEs. There’s money for investment in processing infrastructure and regional food terminals and hubs. There’s the promise of faster approvals for new food technologies, the removal of regulation where it’s deemed unnecessarily restrictive, support for growing production of fruit and vegetables that can be produced all year round and plenty else besides. How was that, Sid? Any, any particular builds on that or comments on that?

Sid Mehta: No, I mean, I mean, you know, I’m an engineer and so I think about solutions in this, you know, pragmatic, you know, you know, pragmatic, you know, way or pragmatic systems kind of approach. And this is a systems approach to a part of Canada’s food system that has for maybe 30 years not received much attention. Like I said, if you take a step back and just ask someone to say, let’s do two columns, support for export, support for domestic. Right, Support for export, everything from export agencies, research centers, funding for SMEs to export, training, you know, how to do a PowerPoint, to talk to exporters, and you name it, it’s there. And it’s a well oiled machine. It runs every day, 365 days. And then you come on the other side and you look at domestic, there’s nothing. And so if you now start filling up that column to say, okay, what do I need to fix to get this going right? Well, the first issue is food insecurity is unevenly distributed in Canada. Canada is an extremely large country. It takes five hours to fly from one end to the other. And you add three hours of time zone or four hours of time zone, nine hours to get from one side to the other side. In the UK you probably could drive from one end to the other. You know, this is a flight extremely different microclimates, different populations, diaspora populations. We have the Northwest Territories, Nunavut has the highest half of the population of the province. Is food insecure? You know, half the roads don’t get to the Communities, water is not available. This is, this is the true north, so to say of Canada. And then when you come to provinces in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Prairie provinces, a different story to Ontario and Quebec, which is a different story. And then you think about the eastern provinces, you know, the P.E.I. and Halifax, another story. And so to think through us approach around this, I think this is a welcome strategy and it is coming from Carney’s view of how his strategy for the country is playing out. He said this many times in Davos. He said a country who can’t feed fuel or defend itself has few options. I always think about this as national security. We need energy security and we need nutritional security. Those are three things. If you box out a country, you got to have these three things. Either you should be doing it as self reliance or you should have good partners that are able to support you on these three things. Now Canada is blessed. We have the largest coastline in the world. I think that’s not a known fact. We have three oceans. We have some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world. We have 80% of our energy is renewable. In some provinces like Quebec, it’s 95% renewable energy. We have critical minerals and, and you can go on and on and on. And so I think this strategy is to really shore up that domestic piece and it’s filling the gaps in where I think there needs focus from that perspective. I do think we are going to have some, some nuances to this strategy. So the first one is the, is the Soviet doctrine around the three or four things I mentioned. But there’s also a few other things I don’t think this government thinks through a singular. They are highly, they are highly focused on multi dimensional ways of delivering strategies of partnership. I think the second one, and this is just my view is inflation and food. Inflation is a highly political topic because it hits every resident, every citizen in different ways. But it hits you. You see it, it’s a transaction you do every day. And so it becomes a political issue and it’s playing out in the US right now. In the US the two biggest domestic issues are inflation and the war. So I think inflation is going to be a huge issue. And so Carney is looking at this and saying, listen, I don’t want this issue to be something that I need to deal with. And currently the conservatives who are in the opposition are looking for topics to debate him on. And he doesn’t want to put, you know, fuel to fire, so to say. So I think I do think there is a bit of a political strategy here on it. And then the last one is around national unity in Canada. If you talk about automobile, you’re talking to the east coast and if you talk about food, you’re talking to the prairie provinces. No matter what it is, that’s how you would hear it. And so as things as he wants to continue to have a one Canada economy and one Canada connect the provinces and the two powerhouse kind of regional provinces, he’s trying to make sure that there are enough investments going into the economies that drive those provinces, domestic or Internet export. So I think those are the three forces, you know, that are at play.

Nick Hughes: That’s fascinating. As is so often the case, food is almost just the lens through which we see bigger strategic decisions, priorities of governments manifesting within the food system. But as you’re talking here about redistribution, you’re talking about perhaps a sort of a shift in focus from generating wealth through trade and exports to ensuring that domestic prices are somewhat less volatile than they might otherwise be. This year sees the launch of the first ever Footprint Festival, A two day experiential and immersive sustainability festival set on a working farm in the heart of the Hampshire countryside. Created for senior leaders across food, service and hospitality, this one of a kind annual event takes place on September 17th and 18th. We’ll blend sensory experiences, transformative content, powerful networking and unforgettable food, drink and entertainment. Tickets are now on sale. Visit footprintfestival.com for more details. Really interesting that you’ve talked Sid, so far about the Carney administration driving this agenda. How has this strategy been received by the food industry? Was there pressure from industry leaders to create something like this or, and how has it been received to date as far as you’re aware?

Sid Mehta: So I’ll, I’ll start with how it has been received. It’s been received cautiously positive. Any investment in Canada’s food sector, you know, domestic or, or, or international is a welcome news for the, for, for, for the sector, especially by the Liberal government. Because the Liberal government doesn’t think about agriculture as, as a core pillar of their strategy, has not thought about it. So you know, and so now this Liberal government is thinking about it, is talking about it, is making, you know, decent investments in the sector is a welcome. Yes. And you, you think about like, you know, governments is, is, is like, you know, you have a team of people, the ministers and those ministers, experiences where they come from matter because that’s what influences strategy and agriculture like that background doesn’t come into the Liberal government. They’re an Urban party, they elect urban leaders and urban leaders don’t know agriculture as much as we think. So I think it’s a good investment. But it’s a cautious. We are cautious. I think there’s a little bit of cautiousness around how this is going to get implemented and I can talk a little bit about that. But top line, amazing, great. Get into a few layers of peel, the layer of onion a little bit and then you get into some of this reality.

Nick Hughes: So let’s touch on delivery then. You alluded to some questions over how some of the commitments within the strategy might land when they sort of make contact with real life. What do you see as being the challenges around delivering what are quite top level ambitions set out in this strategy?

Sid Mehta: Yeah, I think this is where there’s a few things that will happen. So you had asked about industry pressure. I don’t think this came from industry pressure so much as the first few things I had mentioned around trying to be food secure in this geopolitical space, trying to shore out kind of the Canadian unity as well as trying to make sure that, that we’re investing domestically. But from an industry engagement perspective, it will start now because the operationalizing of this will come from industry. So top line is done. There’s no programs yet to deliver them. So now in the next eight weeks or so the bureaucracy will get start engaging with industry and with different types of stakeholders to put pen to paper, to say does existing programs are going to help deliver this, do we need new programs, what projects, which provinces, etc. And there’s a system to do that, so that will work its way through. But I also think that the bureaucracy and the teams that work in our ministries have really had two roles to play. And every department has two kind of strengths. One is how do we export, how do we become more efficient. And the second one is how do we make sure that we are resilient. But there isn’t a third department that knows how to do domestic or strength of experience. We’ve done this before, we know how to do it. And so I think there is going to be some slowness and some learnings as these programs, which is natural. I think it’s going to be natural for this as this strategy rolls out that we’re not going to get everything right, we’ll have to course correct, we’ll have to learn and we’ll have to continue on that iterative journey. So I think we’ll see a lot more and fall in terms of how the program shaped. But over the next Six to eight weeks. I expect that the government will reach out to a broad range of stakeholders to get together to figure out what are the right investment vehicles and programs and projects and so on and so forth. But I think that’s broadly how it will play out, at least from my perspective.

Nick Hughes: Okay. The focus on horticulture is interesting to me. It’s quite a big topic of discussion in the UK at the moment. The UK government is due to publish a horticulture plan later this year. In fact, that’s been planned for some time and hasn’t yet materialized. You touched SID earlier on nutritional security. You specifically said nutritional security rather than food security. So should we see this goal to increase the production and efficiency of fruit and vegetables grown in Canada so that it becomes less dependent on imports through the lens of nutritional security and explicitly linking domestic production of fruit and veg with dietary health?

Sid Mehta: Yeah, I think it’s an interesting way to look at it. As you know, Canada has a thriving greenhouse sector both in Leamington in Ontario and Delta in British Columbia. Around $2.7 billion. At Farmgate, almost 2/3 of it is exported. 2/3 of all of that production is exported. 99% of that 2/3 goes to the US. We are an export nation.

Nick Hughes: It’s huge.

Sid Mehta: It’s huge. And so this strategy, while at the top line, might have a nutritional lens to it. I also think that it is a lens to say we need to make sure that we have a lot more greenhouses in different, you know, in different provinces, different with trying to build out that domestic, the domestic market. Hence there is so much of focus also on retailers in this strategy. We haven’t touched retailers at all because part of the problem has been that we have an extremely concentrated retail space. I mean, 20 years back we had maybe 15 retailers competing. Now we have four. And so what that does is it’s really pushing price up. There isn’t enough competition. There are enough small guys, there’s not enough medium guys. It’s just big guys. And as a result of that, I do think the greenhouse strategy is tied to nutritional security. We need to, we need to be able to grow fruits and vegetables year round. But I think you will see that investments going to different clusters or creating new clusters versus investment in existing clusters because the existing clusters are a high performing, extremely well run sector. And I hope that makes sense. There’s a little bit of a nuance to why this is happening. Again, if you see this government, it never has one reason why they are doing it. They don’t Believe in that.

Nick Hughes: Yeah. And for those that haven’t read the strategy, one of the points that is made clear is that SMEs are almost beholden to the supply chains of these large retailers who dominate the landscape for the supply of their own product. So part of the rationale behind building out this infrastructure is to give those businesses more agency and more control over their own supply chains and to sort of extricate them somewhat from the value chains of those big retailers. So that’s. And again, there will be parallels there with the United Kingdom. Perhaps there is. You know, we have a slightly more competitive retail sector in this country, but still 10 businesses account for 90% of value share in the UK. So it’s still highly concentrated.

Sid Mehta: I think there’s a blind spot. I don’t know if you want it. You know, there’s a bit of a blind spot to this over score all strategy, which I think would also resonate with your listeners in the uk, is there’s a really significant investment in infrastructure. If you think about this strategy, it’s all about an infrastructure strategy, right? You know, build more, upgrade more, you know, put more right. That’s. I call it the hard strategy. Right. Infrastructure, the soft strategy is the people. And I think we’re going to struggle if we don’t invest in the SA skills. For example, if you bring peppers to the Northern Territories, they have never used peppers in their kitchens, school kitchens, hospitals, et cetera. They don’t know how to use tomatoes, they know canned tomatoes, they don’t know fresh tomatoes. And, and so, you know, if you think through that and take the lens, for example, the biggest issue SMEs face is, yes, we need to upgrade our processing facilities, but I need H vac technicians, I need electricians, I need a food tech, I need this tech. Those techs are missing. So yes, you’ll build everything, but if the people don’t know how to fix it and SMEs can’t get them in to help them, and if the cooks and the culinarians and the publics, and this is where I kind of want to tie that point back to public procurement, which is a lot of what your listeners are in space are. There’s a huge role to play both as an enabler of the strategy and that side of the world is not engaged as much. I mean, Scompress, Rexo, Aeromark, all are in Canada as they are in the uk. There’s a lot of self operated infrastructure. Our school programs are mostly run by small packs and so on and so Forth and we gotta invest the capacity building into these systems and into these soft pieces or else we’ll build Vegas and then no one will come to stay in it.

Nick Hughes: Okay, that’s interesting. So there’s, there’s perhaps what’s missing is that training and upskilling piece, but also, but also the engagement and education as well. The point about peppers is interesting, isn’t it? You can develop this capacity to grow, but if people don’t know how to use them or don’t want to eat these products domestically, then you haven’t really solved the issue. It was notable to me, Sid, that risk is mainly framed in the strategy around geopolitical volatility and a lack of market competition. As you’ve just touched on, what seemed to be lacking, and this may well be present in other strategies, is the risk from climate change and extreme weather. In the UK there’s a big conversation around the need for investment in more climate resilient agriculture. Our public subsidies are now directed towards public goods. And I just wonder whether that in Canada the need to adopt more nature based farming systems like regenerative, organic, agroecological features quite as prominently in the discourse around a future fit food system. Or would you say it’s not quite as central as it might be?

Sid Mehta: I kind of want to try and set the baseline of where Canada’s agriculture system is and hence why sometimes you don’t see so much climate because 90% of Saskatchewan’s cropland is already no tillage and it was done by 2016. So when I initially had mentioned that Canadian farmers are extremely sustainable, they think about sustainability, but we don’t talk about it from a sense of agro, biodiversity or region. We just talk about it as innovation. So last year for example, the Senate of Canada published a soil health report, a soil strategy this year. Earlier this year the Ministry of Agriculture announced a major program on soil health. There is a lot of work going on soil as thinking of soil as depends infrastructure as national infrastructure. Just like Internet is and, and so many other things are. And now there is a lot of discussions around how do we make those soils into a nature based economy. So how do we get MRV into the systems, carbon credits, et cetera. We just last month Prime Minister launched the nature strategy. $3 billion into nature 2030, 20 by 30 or 2030 nature strategy. So when you, when you, when you, when you think about the Canadian kind of system, the starting point is quite high. There’s a lot of stuff already happening. The integrated strategy around economic resilience, national strategy and mutual strategy is in response to climate risk, amongst other risk, geopolitical risk, climate risk. So if, if Mexico has a dry spell of California, drought worsens, and if we can’t buy our fruits and vegetables, which 90% of fruits and vegetables comes from California and Mexico, we will struggle. So the strategy is in response to climate risk amongst other risks, but it is not seen through the lens of climate. And again, this is a hallmark of the Carney administration, which has really looked at economic resilience, national security and food security. All three need to come together to deliver, to deliver, you know, a strong and protected and a well, you know, nutritional security. So I think that there’s a really nuance there that I thought the listeners might want to dive into.

Nick Hughes: Yes, absolutely. And yes, this point about a multifunctional strategy has come across very strongly in the way that you’ve described it. Look, Sid, I could speak to you for hours and hours, I think, and drill into the details and the nuances of Canada’s food system and this strategy, but time has defeated us. Thank you so much for being our expert guide to food policy in Canada. I know I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure listeners will have done too. It’s great to hear how other countries are approaching the challenge of making food systems fit for an uncertain future and hopefully food for thought for policymakers in the UK and we know some of them listen to, take away and consider as well. So, Sid, thanks again for joining us on the Small Print.

Sid Mehta: Thanks a lot, Nick.

Nick Hughes: We’ll be back next week with another episode of the Small Print. If you like what you’ve heard, please take a moment to rate, share and subscribe.