By Dr. Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute, and Dr. Lenore Newman, University of the Fraser Valley
This article is republished with permission from The Globe and Mail. Read the original article.
In Davos on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the quiet part out loud: “A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.”
How right he is, and we all should worry.
A huge proportion of the fruits and vegetables eaten by Canadians travel across international borders, and most of this is either produced in the United States or transits through a U.S. port or along an American highway. An irascible U.S. government could starve us within days, and we would have no easy alternatives. So, as old alliances continue to fray, we must realize Greenland, Venezuela, Ukraine and Gaza are wake-up calls. We are living in a world of sharks who don’t think twice about sacrificing communities to the whim of politics.
We are also racing against time in terms of climate change. By the end of the century, huge areas in the Southern U.S., as well as in Latin America, Africa and Asia, will become less productive. In some places, agriculture may fail entirely.
Climate and geopolitical turbulence mean we must now question whether we will be able to continue importing the food we need.
Recent work we’ve done suggests that this stark predicament presents a huge opportunity for Canada. As global temperatures rise, and coastal regions are inundated, there will be a shift in where agricultural land is located. People farming around the equator will lose out, but Canada stands to gain more than any country except Russia. In addition, our country has more fresh water than anywhere else on the planet. Canada is on track to become the world’s most important food-producing region by 2100.
In a fractured world where would-be emperors dream of hemispheric dominance, does this mean we have a target painted on our collective backs? Will we be the next Greenland or Venezuela, where wheat and canola replace critical minerals or fossil fuels? Or will we emerge as a critical linchpin, strategically located between major powers?
It is time to be bold and recognize that Canada can – and must – become the world’s most important food-producing region in the latter part of the 21st century. Our role as global breadbasket can position us for success in this most volatile of centuries. If we don’t act, we leave our fate for others to determine.
One of the challenges in acting on the vision is a lack of understanding or interest in what most see as the unexciting work of feeding a nation. It’s only when things go wrong (often because of a food-safety issue) that agricultural or food experts are thrust into the headlines. The very obscurity of agriculture and food, the almost quaintness with which the public treats the subject, is a mark of how successful our farmers and food processors have been. For most Canadians, food has become an afterthought, something taken for granted.
Government funding reflects this. Over the past 20 years – and compared with other countries – funding for agricultural research and agricultural innovation has plummeted. We have enjoyed a “food dividend” analogous to the “peace dividend” that resulted from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Much like how a long period of stability has led us to underfund defence, the success of the food system has led us to underfund agricultural innovation.
This time is over. The canary in the coal mine must be food price inflation and food insecurity. We live in a country where one in four of us are food insecure, and where our primary responses to this crisis are grassroots charities – food banks – that struggle to keep up with demand.
We need to recognize that, as well as addressing the military funding gap created by the peace dividend, we must increase funding to agricultural innovation that has been neglected owing to the “food dividend.”
We should declare Canada an agricultural country and set a massive target, such as doubling the number of jobs, doubling the production of food and doubling the value of agriculture’s contribution to the economy.
The twin forces of global political uncertainty and climate change are challenging the food system like never before.
This is Canada’s moment. We can become the world’s most important food-producing nation. We can use this power to stand firm against the forces of chaos. But first, we will need the trading partners, the scientific engine and the infrastructure to back this up. The time has come to develop and fund this vision so that we can indeed feed ourselves, and our partners, no matter what.