“For us, it’s very important,” says Guindani, an advocate of cooperative food systems who comes from a family of farmers. The shelves of Raízes’s modest showroom were stocked with the fruits of their labour: organic white rice, chocolate made from Bahian cocoa and coffee beans from the southern reaches of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Plus a trendy yellow ballcap boasting “Agroecologia” on the front for good measure.  

But nothing can compete with the international exposure of COP. Raízes received another boost thanks to famed Indigenous Brazilian chef Tainá Marajoara, who was in charge of catering for world leaders at the conference and had invited the start-up to showcase its products alongside her. “All the work and effort we’ve put so far into raising awareness around our brand really has been a drop in the ocean,” Guindani says.  

Guindani started the Raízes do Campo project in 2018 in an attempt to help transform the food supply model in Brazil, bringing small-scale producers closer to Brazilian consumers and creating a more equitable system to deliver fair earnings to farmers. The start-up officially launched in 2022, marketing products by hundreds of cooperative producers under a single brand. Its line includes coffee, chocolate, rice, beans, sugar and fruit juices. Three years later, it now represents some 3,000 producers. Along the way, Guindani has come up against myriad challenges, everything from needing barcodes in order to sell in supermarkets to understanding product placement in the aisles. She has learned that the one of the greatest challenge revolves around storytelling – how to help consumers understand the higher costs of sustainable products that abide by an agroecology ethos.  

“We couldn’t market this coffee as if it is any coffee from any hacienda,” Guindani says. So they created something called the “spiral of agroecology,” which assigns value along three pillars: social, economic and environmental. They meet with each cooperative to learn about their process, and then try to guide consumers to understand the attention that the producer places on each of those pillars. So, for example, if there are no women who are part of the management of the cooperative, it may rank lower on the social spiral. “The consumer has to understand that there is a difference,” says Guindani, who has long worked in the farming cooperative movement in Latin America. “At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn the families into the protagonists.” 

Proponents of agroecology took COP30 as an opportunity to showcase how small-scale and family farming can transform food systems and provide lasting solutions to climate change. It is the first time that family farming has occupied a formal space at the climate conference, says Paulo Petersen, a Brazilian special envoy for family farming at COP30.  

Petersen wants policymakers to recognize family farming as a “decisive actor” in restructuring food systems that are currently responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions globally. In Brazil, family farming is the backbone of its food system, even if it is largely invisible. Family farms make up 77% of Brazil’s five million rural properties, according to the World Bank, and produce most of what more than 200 million Brazilians eat. While COP30 did not produce an agreement regarding agroecology, Petersen says, their voice was stronger than ever: “Our presence in different spaces at COP was about creating our own narrative.”  

The role that food systems play in the climate battle has only recently joined the global conversation. But it’s Big Ag that takes up most of the room, even now as the narrative shifts into technological advances that promote “regenerative” or “climate intelligent” agriculture. Industrial agriculture has sought to encompass family farming in its messaging and lay claim to practices that support biodiversity and equity. 

“Family agriculture is not part of Big Ag,” Petersen stresses. “What has happened in the last 50 years is that industrial agriculture has disconnected agriculture from its natural environment, production from consumption, and nutrition from health,” he says. Monoculture farming and commodities-based agriculture destabilize the ecological environment in a way that is then remedied with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, he says, which have their own detrimental effect. 

“Family agroecology is a recognition of the peasant farmer methods of doing agriculture, that is based on diverse production, biodiversity, culture and local markets,” Petersen says. Its principles are not just ecological but economic, since a large part of the production is to feed the families themselves. That which is meant for sale requires local markets – but the farmers are at the mercy of powerful middlemen.  

Guindani has seen this first-hand, and how those unequal power balances leave families with meagre returns. “Since they are small pieces of land, and small productive units, they don’t have enough of a volume to make it to the bigger market,” she says. So, it’s the wholesale buyer that ends up occupying an outsized role, scooping up the product, generating volume and leaving the earlier links of the value chain further behind.   

At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn [family farmers] into the protagonists.

– Carla Guindani, executive director, Raízes do Campo

In order to reap the benefit of the agroecological family-farming model, it has to be integrated into food distribution systems that reduce energy consumption in processing, packaging, refrigeration and transport and shorten the chain of intermediaries. That means that public investment can’t just be directed at the small farmer; it must be invested in the entire supply chain that creates the conditions for it to make a wider impact.  

Petersen points to policies in Brazil’s semi-arid region in the northeast that helped turn around an area that is home to half the country’s family farms, and is particularly vulnerable to droughts. The policies provided public services and social protection to farming families, including a cistern system with access to potable water. And it devised local chains of supply and demand that supported small-scale farms. The result is an area that is now more resilient and better able to withstand the shocks of droughts that have become more extreme.  

“What we’re saying is that there isn’t a policy for the climate,” Petersen says. “There are policies for food sovereignty, and it’s those policies that generate mitigating effects around greenhouse gas emissions, that promote adaptation, food security, women’s empowerment and local economies. It’s a win-win effect.”  

For Guindani, the focus continues to be on telling the story of Brazil’s family farmers, who are key to a more sustainable future.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. 

The post In Brazil, family farmers push back on Big Ag appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Beef is already the largest driver of food-related emissions, and climate models suggest there is no way to stave off the worst effects of global warming without cutting back on beef consumption. Yet JBS’s newfound access to capital is all but guaranteed to enable the meat giant to keep expanding.

This sweeping expansion is also a deeply troubling development for the many advocates monitoring the company’s long history of environmental destruction, human rights abuses and animal cruelty.

JBS’s global dominance has also been fuelled by another strategy: tax avoidance. As the $77.2 billion mega-corporation (all figures in U.S. dollars) comes to control an even larger share of the global market, tax experts tell Sentient the move is unlikely to be followed by a proportional hike in JBS’s taxes, especially in the countries that account for a large percent of its sales, like the United States.

They’re doing all of these things in Luxembourg that allow them to shift their profits there, while in practice – in a real economic sense – there doesn’t seem to be much there.

—Vincent Kiezebrink, Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations

Like many multinational companies, JBS has an intricate corporate structure that enables the company to strategically avoid paying taxes by shifting money to more favourable jurisdictions, known as tax havens because of their sparse corporate tax obligations. The strategy shields JBS from paying taxes in the countries where it conducts the bulk of its business – in terms of both its sales and meat production facilities – to countries removed from its principal operations.

Environmental advocates argue that these corporate tax havens hinder climate progress, enabling JBS and many of the world’s largest polluters to avoid paying taxes that could be used to fund investment in climate solutions.

A blatant style of tax avoidance

It’s estimated that JBS avoided paying up to $442 million in taxes between 2019 and 2022, by taking advantage of a network of 17 subsidiaries in Luxembourg, according to research conducted by SOMO, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations. These subsidiaries operate as shell companies, without any clear principal business, beyond facilitating the flow of money from subsidiaries in other countries to JBS’s parent company.

In Luxembourg, for instance, most of JBS’s companies have no employees. SOMO found that 16 out of 17 of these Luxembourg-based companies do not employ anyone, while one company had a total of five employees. Yet this network of subsidiaries owns $58 billion of assets in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe, according to SOMO.

This nesting structure of subsidiaries enables revenue from JBS’s primary business operations (its slaughterhouses, meatpacking plants, beef and poultry farms, etc.) to be taxed in Luxembourg, a known tax haven with tax exemptions for holding companies.

“It’s very classic, brazen tax avoidance,” Vincent Kiezebrink, who specializes in corporate research at the Netherlands-based SOMO, tells Sentient. “There’s nothing there. It’s just on paper,” he says, referring to the Luxembourg subsidiaries. “They’re doing all of these things in Luxembourg that allow them to shift their profits there, while in practice – in a real economic sense – there doesn’t seem to be much there.”

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While corporate tax avoidance is very widespread, baked into the business model of nearly all multinational companies, Kiezebrink has observed that JBS’s very blatant style of tax avoidance is becoming less commonly practised – as this era of so-called corporate social responsibility has led more corporations to adopt, in the very least, a front of ethical governance. “Companies do make more and more of an effort to hide what they’re up to when they’re aggressively avoiding taxes,” he says. Yet at least when it comes to its tax avoidance strategy, Kiezebrink says, “JBS doesn’t seem to have made much of an effort to hide.”

JBS has attempted to depict itself as a good corporate actor in other ways, however, including by committing to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, a pledge that Reuters found the company has since backtracked on and claimed was never a “promise.” JBS also boasts of its Hometown Strong initiative, which has committed $100 million so far to “the communities where we live in and work” by funding local projects across the United States and Canada. Yet this investment in the “hometown” communities where JBS operates is undermined by its corporate structure, which enables JBS to dodge its tax obligations in these same communities.

“When multinationals like JBS are allowed to take advantage of tax loopholes from international tax treaties and avoid paying their fair share of tax, the cost of running a country is still the same, but that burden then falls on everyday taxpayers,” says Tim Vasudeva, the head of private- and public-sector finance at World Animal Protection, and an author of another recent report that builds upon SOMO’s research on JBS’s tax avoidance. According to Vasudeva, this also leads a disproportionate amount of the tax burden to fall on small businesses, which don’t have the same tax-avoidance network of subsidiaries at their disposal as corporate multinationals like JBS.

The artificial flow of capital

Both of the recent reports, produced by SOMO and World Animal Protection, also reveal JBS’s extensive use of intercompany dividends and loans as mechanisms to transfer pre-taxed wealth to its Luxembourg network, before moving it to the parent company, the overarching owner of JBS’s tiers of subsidiaries. The end effect of this is to lower JBS’s overall tax burden and maximize the company’s net profits.

Researchers at SOMO found that JBS’s Luxembourg-based subsidiaries received up to $22 billion in loans in 2022 from its other subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions, specifically Malta and Delaware. JBS paid effectively nothing in interest on these loans, facilitating a massive transfer of money to Luxembourg. According to SOMO’s report, “the weighted averages of the annual interest rates on these loans were 0.4% and 0.65%.”

“There is no reason to lend money to Luxembourg from Malta at 0% interest rate and then lend it to other entities, other than tax purposes,” Vasudeva says. He calls this transfer of money the “artificial flow” of capital – volleying money back and forth for the sole purpose of taking advantage of tax codes in differing jurisdictions.

After receiving these very low-interest loans, the Luxembourg companies continue this artificial flow of money by issuing loans to JBS’s primary operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Brazil and Mexico at much higher interest rates (an average of 5%). By way of pre-tax deductions from interest payments, JBS is then able to lower its tax base in the United States and other jurisdictions where it primarily operates. At the same time, this enables the flow of its profits to Luxembourg.

The researchers also traced JBS’s use of intercompany dividends, another mechanism enabling the flow of pre-taxed money to its Luxembourg network. “Dividend flows to and from subsidiary companies are one of the main ways for multinational companies to redistribute profits generated by their operations worldwide,” the report produced by World Animal Protection states. Multinational corporations are often structured in order to avoid withholding taxes levied on dividends in certain jurisdictions like the United States, while moving the flow of dividends to tax havens.

“Dividends that flow out of the operating company jurisdictions – like Australia, U.S., U.K, etc. — are treated as non-taxable in Luxembourg,” Vasudeva says.

Based on an analysis of financial statements, the World Animal Protection report found that “$11 billion in intercompany dividends flowed through JBS’s group of Luxembourg subsidiary companies,” allowing JBS to avoid paying U.S. withholding tax on dividends. In total, the report found that JBS’s Luxembourg companies paid just half a million in taxes between 2019 and 2022, while collecting $2.8 billion in pre-taxed profits.

Nikki Richardson, JBS USA’s head of corporate communications, did not respond to Sentient’s request for comment about these tax avoidance strategies.

The need for international tax reform

JBS’s unrestricted expansion has become a roadblock to achieving global climate goals, yet it gets little public attention.

The SOMO report notes how there is a “broad scientific consensus” on the need for dietary change – eating less meat and more plants – to limit rising global temperatures. But as the report points out, this important detail is often obfuscated by the meat industry, including through extensive lobbying campaigns that weaken the industry’s climate obligations.

JBS’s expansion serves to hinder progress on human- and animal-rights issues too. The company has a long, checkered history of paving its expansion through unethical business practices, including illegal deforestation and destruction of Indigenous land, documented incidents of modern slavery in the company’s supply chain, working conditions linked to deaths during COVID-19 and other serious injuries in its meatpacking plants, and a well-documented track record of egregious animal welfare violations – incidents that JBS has largely been able to maintain as a business practice by paying government fines and settlement fees.

One potential solution Kiezebrink would like to see implemented is an international system of unitary taxation – also known as formulary apportionment – applied to multinational corporations like JBS. The proposed system would ensure that corporations are taxed in the same jurisdictions where they primarily conduct business. Under international tax law now, subsidiaries of multinationals are each taxed separately, which “provides companies with a lot of leeway to shift profits,” he says.

The proposed system would tax multinational companies as a single entity, dividing the taxes per jurisdiction based on a formula that incorporates factors like the sales, labour or assets in a particular location. The goal is to capture “the genuine economic substance of what they do and where they do it,” as Sol Picciotto wrote in a report published by the Tax Justice Network. “This would ensure that they make a fair contribution as corporate citizens towards the costs of the public services provided by the states where they do business.”

There is already an active effort to reform the current international tax system. The United Nations is negotiating a framework around international taxation, partially aimed at closing regulatory gaps that enable tax havens.

Tax haven reform would also help countries achieve their UN Sustainable Development goals, taking urgent action to combat climate change and hunger that has the potential to rein in corporate tax avoidance if enough countries participate.

Yet in February, the Trump administration withdrew from this negotiation process – even though cracking down on tax havens would likely benefit the United States by preventing corporations from shifting profits produced in the United States to international jurisdictions.

With JBS now trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Vasudeva argues that this too enables JBS to use money that otherwise would be taxed to grow “the factory farming model, which is bad for animals, bad for the environment, bad for biodiversity and bad for their workers.”

This article was originally published by Sentient. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Grey Moran is an award-winning investigative journalist based in Durham, North Carolina.

The post Report exposes brazen tax avoidance by world’s largest meatpacker appeared first on Corporate Knights.

With its rebranding as Beyond, the company’s strategic pivot is meant to underscore its clean plant protein bonafides, and to get investors and consumers back on board, after meat-lobby advocacy and disinformation campaigns painted the sector as ultra-processed and unhealthy. Last week, rumours surfaced in the media that Beyond was heading for bankruptcy, something the company vehemently denied. “We have not filed nor are we planning to file for bankruptcy. Go Beyond,” it said in a statement on X.

Alongside the name change, the company is also launching Beyond Ground, a simpler product made with four ingredients. It has also reformulated its flagship Beyond IV burger to cut saturated fat by 60% and sodium by 20%. “Our second quarter of 2025 required a deeper and fundamental reset of our company,” Beyond CEO Ethan Brown said in a May 2025 earnings call. “The necessity of this reset, however, does not reduce or diminish our commitment of enthusiasm for the future that awaits.”

Revenue down, misinformation up

The rebrand of Beyond Meat, once lauded as the vanguard of plant‑based innovation, comes as our food consumption culture and the market shift, making the once-promising investment a tougher pea to swallow. After its eye‑watering 2019 initial public offering and subsequent rise, the company now faces a 19.6% year‑over‑year drop in revenues. Its 2025 second-quarter net revenues were US$75 million,  well below the approximately US$82 million analysts had expected. With retail demand down – refrigerated sales by 17.2% and frozen by 8.1% – and investors responding with a stock price at a multiyear low, it’s clear the category is in need of a refresh. At the same time, the company also secured US$100 million in debt financing from Unprocessed Foods, a subsidiary of the Ahimsa Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting plant-based eating. This funding is part of a broader investment push by Ahimsa and its affiliates, which have recently backed companies such as Simulate, Eat Just, Blackbird Foods and Wicked Kitchen.

According to Brown, misinformation has been a major driver in consumers’ move away from the company’s offerings. “While Beyond Meat can always and will always seek to improve our products, we believe the central issue impeding our return to sustained growth is perception. Or more accurately, misperception,” he said during the call. A meat-industry-backed public relations group called the Center for Consumer Freedom has been painting plant-based meats as ultra-processed, unhealthy and even scary, focusing on long ingredient lists and unfamiliar ingredient names. This messaging was then amplified by veterinary pharmaceutical giant Elanco. The rise of the carnivore movement, along with other politically charged trends toward more seemingly “natural” proteins and ongoing meat industry advocacy and disinformation campaigns, have all helped paint plant-based meat alternatives into a difficult corner.

Thus the stage is set for a dramatic overhaul, and Beyond Meat knows it. “If we look inward, our highest priority is driving operating and margin improvements. Externally, our highest priority is on dispelling misinformation and empowering the consumer to make informed decisions around our products,” Brown said.

Daring moves

Daring product shifts are often accompanied by daring company rebranding. In this case, Beyond’s branding reset and product strategy are not just survival tactics, but calculated attempts to redefine the company’s identity. “Going forward, we intend to increasingly use Beyond as the primary brand identifier,” Brown said, adding that the emphasis will instead be on providing high-quality plant protein rather than replicating animal meat. In addition to the name shift, Beyond is also planning to release a new simplified ground-protein product made from water, fava bean protein, potato protein and psyllium husk. The company also noted via social media that it will offer three pre-seasoned varieties, including Tuscan Tomato.

“Our limited test offering of Beyond Ground on our social channels last week represents an early foray beyond beef, pork and poultry replication and has been met with considerable enthusiasm, albeit within a very narrow consumer set,” Brown said. “In the coming months, we will provide additional details on our increased use of the brand mark Beyond, which will be implemented on a rolling basis.”

In July, Fast Company reported that the new ground-protein product would be available on Beyond’s website in August. As of publication of this article, it is not yet for sale.

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also the culture and disinformation correspondent for Sentient. 

The post Beyond Meat drops ‘meat’ in rebrand that shifts focus to plant protein appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“We’re doubling” says Vandenhurk, speaking with Corporate Knights. “We’ll double over last year, and then we’re on a path where we can see ourselves doubling again next year.”

Three Farmers has been scaling up business and production since settling into a new facility last year, and in January, the company successfully closed a new round of equity financing. Vandenhurk, who runs Three Farmers with her sister, Elysia, says she’s “raised probably five rounds of capital” since the company launched 16 years ago. Every round has looked different, she says. Yet one thing hasn’t changed: “Raising money is always really hard.”

With continued success, the Three Farmers brand could become a flag-bearer for this country’s pulse-based protein sector. And it’s part of bigger trend: a surge in innovators and entrepreneurs seeking opportunities in Canada’s food-industry value chain, from small-scale farmers to globally minded biotech ingredient makers. And like Vandenhurk, they are also chasing investment capital or project financing, though not always with as much success.

We’re waving the flag about the incredible opportunity in agriculture and food to attract other investors.

– Graeme Millen, vice president of strategic finance and business development at Farm Credit Canada

“Raising capital in the food- and agri-tech sector remains challenging. We hear from many peers that they are facing pushback on valuations and investor hesitancy due to economic uncertainty,” says Quinn Cavanagh, the Halifax-based president and founder of RFINE Biomass Solutions.

RFINE is pilot testing a technology to sustainably upcycle used coffee grounds into flavouring and other food-grade ingredients. “Capital access has not been a hurdle for us,” Cavanagh says, crediting his company’s “diversified” business model and relationship building with stakeholders. “[But] from what we learn in industry discussions, our experience is not typical.”

Converging trends boost domestic food production

The headwinds haven’t slowed the rush of new companies looking for funding. Federal crown corporation Farm Credit Canada has long been one of the country’s largest for-profit lenders to the agriculture and agribusiness sectors. Graeme Millen, FCC’s vice president of strategic finance and business development, says FCC’s tracking of new market entrants in food and agribusiness has shown a 10% to 15% increase in recent years compared to pre-COVID.

“Food supply, access to food, production of food, connection between food as medicine, health, food security: all of these themes are core to the public narrative,” Millen says. “And I think that’s embodying itself in entrepreneurs being increasingly interested in the sector.”

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But over this same span, FCC also recognized that they face a growing struggle to raise funds. “There haven’t been established pools of capital to support entrepreneurs [in this space],” Millen says. Last year, it officially stepped into the breach, launching FCC Capital to provide companies with high-risk debt, equity and strategic value investments while also investing in larger ag-oriented funds. In its first year, it closed nine direct investment deals totalling $170 million, including joining Three Farmers’ latest financing as a strategic partner.

In May, FCC Capital staked out its grand ambitions, announcing a commitment to invest $2 billion by 2030. “We’re making it easier and more compelling for entrepreneurs to participate in this market,” Millen says. “And, really importantly, we’re waving the flag about the incredible opportunity in agriculture and food to attract other investors.”

A real lack of scaling capital

To put $2 billion in new, dedicated funding over five years in perspective, it’s roughly double the amount ($972 million) the entire venture capital industry invested in Canada’s agribusiness sector from 2020 through 2024.

Canada has many obvious strengths competing against other countries in agribusiness and food- and agritech, including geography, research and development, sector expertise and established markets. But the comparative strength of our venture-capital support structure isn’t one of them.

According to a first-ever report on Canada’s food-tech ecosystem, published in February by the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN), based in Guelph, Ontario, venture capital has backed only 40% of food-tech rounds in Canada in the last four years, compared to 60% in the United States and the United Kingdom.

From a financing request standpoint, this is probably the most demand that we’ve seen in the history of the fund.

– Jusin Abbiss, executive director of Fair Finance Fund

Dana McCauley, CEO of CFIN, says a further breakdown of the data reveals a critical weak spot. “The research that we did shows that at the seed and Series A level [financings], we’re pretty competitive and pretty much on par with the U.S. and U.K. But once . . . you need to grow these companies, ag tech and food tech are just like, whoosh, way down against those other countries. So we have a real lack of scaling capital.”

CFIN’s mission is to showcase Canada’s potential as a creator of food-tech solutions and to improve our overall food sector through food-tech adoption. A national industry association, established in 2021, it funds collaborative projects, not companies. Supporting RFINE’s pilot with coffee retailers is one such example. “We fund a project between a technology adopter – a needful party – and the food-tech innovator,” McCauley says. “Those two, they get the first benefit. But the idea is that it will be transferable to other companies.”

Big demand for small-scale producers

Demand for capital isn’t restricted to those aspiring to build national or global competitors, however. Small-scale growers and food producers, many linked to growing interest in locally grown food and food security, are also fuelling the trend. And a mounting number are knocking on Justin Abbiss’s door.

Abbiss is executive director of Fair Finance Fund, an Ontario-based, non-profit social finance lender that supports small-scale producers who also have environmental and social initiatives built into their business plans. Much of its capital is raised through the sale of community bonds. “Big banks will support medium- to large-size operations,” he says. “But it’s really hard for newcomer populations to get financing, and then even harder when it comes to small-scale food producers.”

Since the fund launched in 2019, it has helped more than 70 clients. Approximately half of its portfolio is small-scale farms, including some on urban allotments; the rest is a combination of food producers, wineries, breweries, cafés and coffee roasters. “We have a really strong demand right now,” Abbiss says. “From a financing request standpoint, this is probably the most demand that we’ve seen in the history of the fund.”

According to Abbiss, all levels of government must offer more grant funding and other concessionary capital to meet the growing demand, particularly in light of tensions in Canada’s trade relationship with the United States. “Food entrepreneurs are seeking support for made-in-Canada solutions, to either expand their business to meet customer demands or launch new product lines.”

While shortfalls persist, he says the current trends are encouraging. “I’m optimistic. I’m seeing growing demand for supporting Canadian-grown or -produced food.”

Identifying demand is the easy part. The true test will be matching it with enough capital.

Brian Banks is a writer and editor whose work focuses mainly on science and nature, conservation, climate and sustainability.

The post Canadian food start-ups are surging and funders are racing to keep up appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The resentment fuelling this campaign, for which nobody took responsibility, was widely shared. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, as post-pandemic food price inflation peaked, the three grocery conglomerates that control the majority of the food retail market in Canada – Loblaw, Empire (owner of Sobeys) and Metro – were turning record profits, as their executives pocketed bonuses in the millions. All that in the wake of revelations that they had been colluding to fix the price of bread over a 14-year period. 

Today, as the ongoing trade war with the United States drives food prices up even further, many Canadians approach the grocery store with some combination of anxiety, dread and rage. But a small subset feels quite differently. 

“Spending money on food feels like an investment to me,” says Jon Steinman, a resident of Nelson, B.C., and author of the 2019 book Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants. 

Steinman is an enthusiastic participant in the cooperative food economy, which accounts for some 4% of Canada’s total grocery market, according to the Retail Council of Canada. And he believes that now, as Canadians express their patriotism in the grocery aisles, seeing their consumer habits as political choices, the food co-op’s moment may have truly come. “Many Canadians talk about the need for greater food sovereignty or security,” Steinman says, “without realizing that they could actually have ownership of the system.” 

Born and raised in Toronto, Steinman was oblivious to the co-op concept – which was not even mentioned in the bachelor of commerce degree he did at the University of Guelph – until he moved to British Columbia in the early 2000s to work in the wine industry. On a stop in Nelson, a former mining town in the Selkirk Mountains, he found himself listening with interest to the local radio station. When he learned that it was run as a co-op, he began volunteering. Soon he was hosting the morning news show. Then he discovered that his favourite grocery store in town was also member-owned; he paid his $50 and joined the Kootenay Co-op. Before long, Steinman had dropped his wine plans and committed himself to Nelson’s vibrant cooperative economy.

Read more from our collective economy series

What appealed to Steinman about the Kootenay Co-op is the most distinctive feature of co-ops generally: their ability to reflect the needs and priorities of their customers, who are also their owners. If affordability is an issue, a co-op may vote – and many do – to apply all profits above a certain threshold to lowering prices. If business is booming and demand growing, it may opt to expand. If national sovereignty is under threat, it may elect to reconsider its suppliers. 

So why have food co-ops not made bigger inroads into the Canadian food economy? Many living in central Canada barely have access to them (Toronto, for instance, has only two), while Western Canadians may take them for granted, forgetting that the iconic red Co-op brand in fact belongs to Federated Co-operatives Limited, the largest non-financial co-op in Canada, which operates gas stations, car washes and liquor, food and convenience stores. And misconceptions about co-ops abound. For many, the term suggests added expense and effort, or a sense that they are buying into something ideological, less profit-driven and therefore inefficient. 

But consider the Swiss example. In the business-friendly banking capital of the world, 80% of the grocery market is controlled by two co-ops: Coop and Migros, respectively the 34th and 41st largest retailers in the world, according to Deloitte’s most recent ranking. Both have more than two million members – membership is free to all Swiss citizens – and play a significant and progressive role in Swiss life. It was thanks in large part to Migros that Swiss women earned the right to vote federally in 1971 – the co-op was the campaign’s largest corporate backer, advertising its support on its shopping bags – and it has, since 1957, contributed 1% of its turnover to cultural and social projects. Both Migros and Coop have been pioneers in launching organic product lines and discontinuing the use of plastic bags. 

Now everyone is talking about buying Canadian, but we’ve been having that conversation for eons.

— Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada

As in Switzerland, the majority of Canada’s food co-ops grew out of agricultural co-ops: established by dairy producers in the late 19th century and Western grain farmers in the early 20th century. Then there was the more recent wave, inspired by the “Small is beautiful” economic and natural food movements of the 1970s, to which the Kootenay Co-op belongs. Frustrated by the high prices and limited selection of corporate chains, a small group of Nelson locals formed a buyers’ club, purchasing bulk staples with an emphasis on local and unprocessed foods. Today, the Kootenay Co-op, which operates out of a building on Nelson’s main drag, has more than 16,000 members and does roughly $28 million in sales annually, making it Canada’s largest independent natural foods co-op. 

Beyond providing a grocery supply aligned with its membership’s values – fair labour practices, organic, Canadian – Steinman says the co-op has served as an incubator for the local food system. The soft winter wheat used in the pumpkin butter tarts he just baked, he tells me, came from the nearby Creston Valley; the grain farmers in that region had been growing for export and the mass market until the co-op approached them and offered a local customer base. Likewise, the co-op provides grants and donations to local producers and supports local cultural initiatives; overall, Steinman says, it strengthens the local economy in a way that outlives electoral cycles. 

In a time of exceptional geopolitical and economic volatility, the timing does seem ripe. “Now everyone is talking about buying Canadian,” says Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs for Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, “but we’ve been having that conversation for eons. The biggest hurdle to co-ops is the perception that they’re some kind of marginal alternative. They’re not. They’re a very well-established practice in this country. They happen whenever people come together around a common need.”

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In our passion for spuds, humans have consecrated an area of the earth roughly equivalent to the size of Great Britain. From those vast tracts we produce 375 million tons of potatoes globally, which is something like the weight of every car in the United States put together. The world’s potatoes are collectively worth US$116 billion, and the market is booming. 

What makes a potato good? Sure, it’s flexible in the kitchen and can be mashed for ease, scalloped for excellence or grated for latkes. But best of all it can be cut into strips and fried in oil until it is both crispy and soft – an unparalleled comfort food, adored by vegans and omnivores alike. 

Everyone eats french fries. (Well, 98% of North Americans, at any rate.) As you read this, you’ve probably got a bag of frozen fries in your freezer, just waiting for you to dump them on a pan and bake them in the oven at 425°F for 20 to 25 minutes the next time you’re too tired to cook. 

In the kingdom of frozen french fries, only one producer could rightfully claim the throne: McCain Foods, a Canadian company founded in the small town of Florenceville, New Brunswick, and now in its 68th year. Today, it is active in 160 countries across four continents, and its annual sales of frozen potato products exceed $16 billion. A major supplier for McDonald’s, McCain claims to produce one out of every four french fries eaten in the world. 

But McCain has a problem. It’s the same problem that confronts us all, to a greater or lesser extent: climate change is imperilling how we get our food.

A crisis for agriculture

“When we first started on our journey as a company, we probably would have experienced a climate event once every 10 to 15 years,” Charlie Angelakos said on a video call in April. “What we’ve found, particularly in the last 10 years, is that climate issues started happening with our crops on a more frequent basis.” 

Angelakos is McCain’s vice president of global external affairs and sustainability, and he’s telling me about a study the company issued in 2018 to assess its vulnerability to the impacts of a rapidly changing climate. The results were startling. “It showed that if we were to stay on the same trajectory, we would have more and more climate disasters with our crops in the different growing regions around the world.”

Today, Angelakos says the company contends with three to five climate events every year across the 3,900 farms globally that supply its potatoes. By “events” he means crop killers: entire harvests destroyed by fire, flood or drought, as well as wild swings in yield from year to year. The company’s executives realized they needed to act quickly to secure their supply chain. The solution, they realized, was hiding in plain sight: a traditional form of farming that preceded industrial monoculture agriculture, protects against droughts and floods, and even offers better returns for farmers – aka, regenerative agriculture. 

It’s an assured supply strategy. How do you build a sustainable, resilient food supply chain for the future?

—Charlie Angelakos, VP of sustainability, McCain Foods

So the company embarked on a new mission to attain 100% regenerative agriculture across its farms by 2030. Currently, 71% of its farmers are at the onboarding level.

Other large corporations like Pepsi and Nestlé have announced commitments to regenerative agriculture in recent years, but those pledges have largely been framed in terms of meeting emission-reduction targets. For McCain, the logic is more immediately existential: the goal is to better cope with environmental and financial shocks. “It’s an assured supply strategy,” Angelakos says. “How do we build a sustainable, resilient food supply chain for the future?” 

Replenishing the soil

“Regenerative agriculture” is a $10 phrase that sounds too wholesome to be interesting – until you consider the stakes. Namely, the viability of a food system that keeps us fed at the expense of nature and our health. 

Basically, it’s the opposite of monoculture farming, which has sustained the earth’s exploding population for decades but relies heavily on herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and synthetic fertilizers. Regenerative agriculture strives to cut back and eliminate all those harmful chemical inputs, so the farms can function as healthy, self-sustaining ecosystems. In other words, it’s a method for turning dirt into soil, by bringing back the micro-organisms and other stuff that make plants happy.

Really, regenerative farming is just the old ways of doing things, says Harold Perry, a potato farmer in Alberta and a supplier for McCain and Frito-Lay. Perry’s family has been farming 6,000 acres near the town of Lethbridge since 1909, beginning with his great-grandfather John. Perry’s daughter is studying agronomy and will take over next, the fifth generation to raise crops on that land. 

Perry, who is 54, has been fascinated by the science of soil health for nearly three decades. He received a scholarship from Nuffield Canada in 2006 to travel internationally and meet other farmers using regenerative practices, and he’s well-versed in the research and language of plant biology. But for all the complexity of modern agronomy, the techniques for achieving healthy soil are fairly straightforward. “Our major thing is to keep the ground green at all times,” Perry says over the phone, referring to the practice of planting so-called cover crops such as buckwheat, clover and hairy vetch during times when regular cash crops are not being grown. Cover crops not only deposit more nutrients and organic material into the ground; they also protect the soil from damage from extreme heat. 

This basic principle of regenerative farming – often referred to as “armouring” the soil – is also one of the six key principles in McCain’s Regenerative Agriculture Framework, produced in partnership with the U.S. Soil Health Institute, which the company is using to guide its network of farmers through the program and measure their progress.

While most other food producers that carry the financial heft of McCain would use brokers, the company contracts directly with farmers, which allows it to more effectively implement new standards and practices. 

Another key tenet of regenerative farming is tilling the ground less or not at all, which the company calls “minimized soil disturbance.” There’s a mechanical straightforwardness to the logic to this practice: by avoiding tillage and allowing the roots from cover crops to break up the soil, it becomes less dense and compacted, so more water, nutrients and micro-organisms can soak down into it. 

In conventional agriculture, the soil can’t hold water nearly as well, so it’s more vulnerable to flooding. “When it rains a lot, a significant amount of soil is washing away from your field, and the top layer is very important because this is where there’s more nutrients and more organic matter,” says Claudia Goyer, a molecular biologist for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Flooding carries not only topsoil into the watershed, but fertilizer as well, where the fertilizer feeds algal blooms.

Surging adoption

Unlike many other solutions to society’s most pernicious problems, regenerative farming has one overwhelming advantage over conventional agriculture: it’s more profitable – as much as 75% to 80% more profitable, according to research by the Soil Health Institute. “Conventional systems are focused on yield, whereas regenerative systems are more focused on profit,” explains Salar Shemirani, CEO at the certification provider Regenified. “Yield can go down for a year or two during the transition, but you are using less inputs, less fuel, less labour.” Fewer costs means better returns. 

This is especially important as conventional farming can be a low- or no-profit business, and farmers lately have been forced to contend with historically high costs of doing business. The prices for fertilizer, seed and other inputs have all soared, while commodity prices for their products have plunged. In the United States, President Donald Trump’s universal trade war has made the situation even worse.  

Still, farmers can take a hit at the very outset of their transition. “We do know that in the early years there will be a slight dip in profitability for the farmer, and then over time, as yields increase, it does become a profitable endeavour,” Angelakos says.

McCain has partnerships with financial institutions in eight different countries to offer low-interest loans and other discounted financing options to help its farmers invest in things like cover crops and new equipment. 

Transitioning to regenerative practices can be an uphill struggle for other reasons too. “A lot of growers felt that it was forced on them,” Perry says. When big companies insist on new practices, it can feel like they’re saying that farmers don’t know what they’re doing, and this can be an impediment to adoption. 

It is essential that companies set up frameworks that lead to steep reductions in agrochemical use in their supply chain at an urgent pace.”

—Sarah Starman and Kendra Klein, Friends of the Earth

Still, because of its many upsides and few downsides, regenerative farming is rapidly gaining traction; stakeholders using the language of change curve models now say it has moved past the early adopter phase and entered the early majority phase. A market analysis by Grand View Research projects that regeneratively farmed products will see a compound annual growth rate of 15.7% from 2023 to 2030. 

Gabe Brown, the well-known advocate for soil health and co-founder at Regenified, says that he’s seen more change, more commitments and more progress in the past two years than in the past 30 years combined. 

Among regenerative agriculture’s most notable fans is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., currently serving as the U.S. secretary of health and human services. His Make America Healthy Again plan lists “advancing regenerative and precision agriculture” among its top goals. The former environmental lawyer advocates for a “nutrition-based approach to disease prevention” that starts with soil health. Kennedy points the blame at “highly chemical, intensive processed foods.” 

But surging interest in regenerative farming has made it vulnerable to greenwashing. Bloomberg News warned in 2023 that Big Food’s regenerative agriculture push was running a greenwashing risk, due to the lack of established targets. A report by the investor network FAIRR found that among 79 agrifood companies worth US$3 trillion, most (50) had announced some kind of regenerative initiative with their suppliers, but few were measuring their progress and only four were actually supporting farmers financially to deploy regenerative practices. Lots of talk; not much meaningful action.  

Regenerative agriculture intrinsically means taking a holistic approach to farming, and industry greenwashing can generally be identified by its reductivity – especially by equating the whole methodology with the single practice of tilling less, while continuing to pour agrochemicals onto the soil.

A new report published in April by Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner, and Kendra Klein, deputy director of science, at Friends of the Earth, found that “the vast majority (93%) of U.S. corn and soy acreage grown in no-till and minimum-till management systems relies on toxic pesticides that harm soil health and threaten human health.” 

Asked about McCain’s regenerative framework, the authors wrote in an email to Corporate Knights that the company had made a great start by explicitly lifting up agrochemical reduction as a pillar of its program and by using an accepted benchmarking system to effectively measure its progress. But key aspects of their approach could be improved: “McCain doesn’t share a specific timeline for moving growers in their supply chain beyond the first level, ‘Engaged.’ Given the devastating impacts of agrochemicals on biodiversity, climate, soil, and human health, it is essential that companies set up frameworks that lead to steep reductions in agrochemical use in their supply chain at an urgent pace, not leave the door open for a continuation of the status quo.” 

Despite its commitment to regenerative farming, McCain is not otherwise a leader on environmental, social and governance metrics. Sustainalytics gives McCain an “average” rating for its management of ESG material risk. McCain does not disclose enough information to be a contender for Corporate Knights’ Best 50 list of Canada’s most sustainable companies.

Making the case

As auspicious as the overall trend looks, conventional agriculture remains extremely entrenched, and most people don’t know or care about regenerative practices. “According to our most recent research, most people aren’t sure what regenerative agriculture is, or its potential in mitigating climate change,” Angelakos says. Fewer than one in 10 Canadians understand the concept of regenerative agriculture practices; 26% of Canadians had never heard about it. 

Still, the market indifference to regenerative agriculture could be taken as an indicator that McCain is being honest about its motives and serious about its transition. But they aren’t leaving consumers to find their own way. The company is working hard to promote the idea of regenerative agriculture, through ad campaigns, partnerships with influencers and a demonstration project with the Sustainable Markets Initiative in the United Kingdom to show the strong business case for regenerative farming. It even made an augmented-reality game, whereby a cartoon farm is projected onto a surface using your phone’s camera. Users gain points by growing potatoes and then investing in pollinators, crop cover, livestock and technology. 

But change happens on the ground, not on our phones. Our food system needs more biodiversity, not more industrial inputs. Fortunately, farms really do work best – and farmers do better – when nature takes the lead.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of countries in which McCain is active. 

Cover image: Harold Perry inspects fresh piles of compost and digestate at CKP farms near Coaldale, Alberta on May 23, 2025.

Mark Mann is a journalist in Montreal and the associate editor at Corporate Knights. 

Photography by Guillaume Nolet.

The post How McCain Foods embraced regenerative farming appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In East Africa, a quieter crisis is unfolding – one that reveals how deeply global food systems are interconnected. In Kenya, the price of a tray of 30 eggs has nearly doubled since early 2023.

For families where eggs are a primary, affordable source of nutrition, this isn’t just economic turbulence. It’s a direct blow to food security.

Let’s follow the trail.

Unlike Canada, where a regulated poultry supply management system has helped keep prices relatively stable for both farmers and consumers, East Africa operates in a far more volatile environment. Poultry feed in the region is deeply tied to global commodity markets, especially for maize and soy – crops that have been battered by drought in southern Africa, conflict in Ukraine and fluctuating international demand.

In Kenya, feed costs account for up to 80% of total poultry production expenses. Between January 2023 and early 2024, the price of soybean meal rose from 86 to 113 shillings per kilogram – a jump of more than 31%. Yellow maize, another critical feed component, surged from 40 to 60 shillings per kilo in the same period. For smallholder farmers, these price swings are not just inconvenient; they are existential threats.

Part of the problem lies in how East Africa has been integrated into global supply chains under the banner of food security. Kenya imports around 90% of its soybean needs, much of it from the United States. This dependence isn’t accidental: it reflects decades of donor-driven policy choices. U.S. foreign assistance, particularly through the U.S. Agency for International Development, has historically prioritized food aid in the form of surplus U.S. grain and oilseed exports, reinforcing global trade flows rather than investing in local production ecosystems that could reduce such dependencies.

In 2022 alone, USAID (whose funding has been gutted under President Donald Trump) and partners provided nearly $2 billion in emergency food aid to sub-Saharan Africa – much of it as imported commodities. While crucial in humanitarian crises, these flows have had an unintended side effect: crowding out investment in regional feed production, processing infrastructure and local supply chain development. The result is a chronic dependence on volatile global markets that leave farmers vulnerable to external shocks.

The consequences are visible across the region. As feed prices climbed, many commercial poultry farmers were forced to reduce flock sizes, creating a supply shortfall that drove egg prices even higher. Consumers, especially in lower-income households where eggs are often the most accessible source of protein, have borne the brunt of these price surges.

Yet, amid this volatility, something remarkable is happening.

The collective economy steps in

Across East Africa, women-led poultry cooperatives are demonstrating an alternative. Far from being passive victims of global market failures, these co-ops are building local resilience – one egg at a time.

Take the Kuku Women’s Poultry Cooperative in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Confronted with skyrocketing feed prices, the members of Kuku shifted to sourcing alternative local ingredients such as sunflower seedcake and cassava peels, reducing dependence on expensive imports. By pooling their resources, they negotiated bulk purchases of essential feed components and invested in small-scale feed mills owned by the co-op itself. “We couldn’t wait for traders or donors to rescue us,” co-op leader Ruth Wanjiku says. “We had to create our own safety net.”

In Tanzania, the Building a Better Tomorrow for Livestock and Fisheries (BBT-LIFE) program has been instrumental in empowering women and youth in the poultry sector. Launched by the Tanzanian government in 2023, this initiative aims to modernize the poultry industry by providing training, resources and support to small-scale farmers. The program has facilitated the formation of cooperatives and encouraged the adoption of innovative practices to enhance productivity and sustainability. Women have established mini feed-production systems, sourcing maize locally and experimenting with protein-rich moringa leaves and black soldier fly larvae as feed supplements.

We couldn’t wait for traders or donors to rescue us. We had to create our own safety net.

—Ruth Wanjiku, Kuku Women’s Poultry Cooperative

Building a Better Tomorrow has garnered significant attention from international organizations. Notably, the African Development Bank approved a US$129.71-million loan to support the program, covering more than half of its total budget. The Tanzanian government contributes the remaining funds, demonstrating a strong public–private partnership model.

These stories aren’t outliers; they reflect a broader shift. Across Africa, women account for 60% to 80% of food producers, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and poultry farming remains one of the most accessible economic activities for women in rural areas because of its low capital and land requirements.

Lessons from the Global South

This pattern echoes globally. During Argentina’s economic collapse in the early 2000s, smallholder farmers in the Federación Agraria banded together to pool resources, secure better prices and access international markets. Spain’s Mondragon Corporation – a federation of worker cooperatives – navigated the 2008 global financial crisis without mass layoffs, sustaining both employment and community stability. Even in the United States, the Organic Valley cooperative kept its supply chains steady during COVID-19 disruptions, while many industrial agribusinesses struggled.

There’s a deeper reckoning underway in global food systems. For decades, factory farming in the Global North has obscured the real cost of food production, propped up by government subsidies for feed crops like corn and soy, lax environmental regulations, and low-wage, precarious labour. According to FoodPrint, a food awareness project, these subsidies artificially depress the price of key inputs, masking the environmental damage and labour exploitation embedded in industrial agriculture.

In the United States, egg prices surged from an average of $1.49 per dozen in 2021 to more than $4.25 in 2023, largely driven by avian flu outbreaks and supply chain disruptions. Yet, sustainable production models – those that ensure fair labour, animal welfare and environmental stewardship – suggest that the true cost of a dozen eggs could range from $8 to $10, aligning with the prices seen for pasture-raised or certified humane eggs. This disparity highlights how deeply externalized costs have been embedded in the industrial food system, leaving consumers disconnected from the actual price of ethical, sustainable food.

As global prices inch closer to reflecting these real costs, East Africa’s co-ops offer a powerful lesson: resilience is local, cooperative and community-driven.

A global wake-up call

This is not going unnoticed. According to a 2023 report from the FAIRR Initiative, a coalition of investors that monitors risks and opportunities in the livestock sector, 84% of institutional investors now see intensive animal agriculture as a material financial risk, and 78% consider sustainable proteins critical to their environmental, social and governance strategies. Funds like AgDevCo and RSF Social Finance are beginning to direct capital toward African co-ops, recognizing the value of shorter, more resilient supply chains.

However, investment alone won’t be enough. Agribusiness giants still dominate, spending more than US$793 million between 2019 and 2023 on lobbying to entrench their market positions. For collective economies to scale, policy support is essential. Governments can level the playing field with tax incentives for cooperative formation, grants for feed innovation and public procurement policies that prioritize community-based producers.

Donor agencies like USAID, in whatever form it continues, also have a role to play. Moving from a reactive model of food aid to proactive investment in local production ecosystems would build long-term resilience. Supporting regional feed production, farmer training and agroecological research can unlock the full potential of local supply chains.

Because when the next crisis strikes – and it will – it won’t be multinational corporations that keep food on our tables. It will be local producers, neighbours and communities bound by trust and mutual obligation.

Shilpa Tiwari is the founder of No Women No Spice and Isenzo Group. She is based in Canada and Tanzania.

The post As egg prices soar, African women lead solutions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Politicians have called on the public to “buy Canadian,” provinces have ordered U.S. products removed from shelves, and Canadian retailers have seen a surge in domestic sales. Yet the importance of agricultural adaptations for achieving greater Canadian self-reliance has largely been overlooked.

The federal government’s plan for building a stronger agrifood sector is mainly based on financial safeguards and loan options for affected farmers and supply-chain management of existing products. The broad topic of agricultural innovation is barely mentioned at all.

At a time of changing geopolitical and physical environments, we must ensure the long-term resilience of Canada’s farms. An important step toward achieving this complex and multifaceted goal would be to diversify the country’s crop production.

Over-reliance on a few crops leaves Canada vulnerable

Anyone browsing their supermarket’s produce section will quickly discover just how few of the products are grown in Canada. This is ironic; as most gardeners know, many imported fruits and vegetables can grow extremely well in Canada.

Canada imports around 50% of vegetables and 75% of fruits from abroad, much of it from the United States. This has not traditionally caused concern since the agrifood sector has a net trade surplus. But among Canadian crops, just two – canola and wheat – dominate total earnings.

Canada’s need for imports leaves it vulnerable, but so does its need for exports.

In 2019, for instance, after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, China imposed harsh trade restrictions on Canadian canola. That year, canola exports to China fell by 70%. Today, Canada faces similar issues with 100% tariffs imposed by China on canola products.

Instead of just bailing out farmers affected by current events, governments should help those who are interested to diversify and grow crops that can be sold domestically.

Crop diversification yields multiple benefits

Even before the current tariffs, there were good reasons for diversifying Canadian agriculture and growing food locally.

The nutritional value of vegetables decreases during storage and transport, suggesting that local produce may be healthier. Similarly, crop diversity can be an important tool for improving plant and soil health and so increasing yields while ensuring environmental sustainability.

In a meta-analysis of 5,156 experiments from across the globe, researchers in France and the Netherlands showed that crop diversification typically enhanced net productivity, soil function and ecosystem services. It had the greatest effect on water quality and organism-induced damage; weed reduction, pest reduction, disease control and associated crop damages showed 33% to 60% average improvements.

To sustain momentum, the government needs to proactively fund targeted, large-scale feasibility studies and provide training, recruitment and transition funding for those interested in novel crop systems.

– Karen Christensen-Dalsgaard, Department of Biological Sciences, MacEwan University

The benefits in terms of soil health and productivity may be compounded by intercropping plant species with fungi. Preliminary results from my current research project suggest that edible saprotrophic fungi could be used as a tool for maintaining soil health while minimizing the use of environmentally problematic soil amendments.

Diversification studies include a range of different land-management techniques, some of which involve elaborate intercropping approaches that might be difficult to implement on an industrial scale. However, even relatively simple crop-rotation approaches have a positive impact on soil carbon, nutrient levels, microbial activity, biodiversity and net productivity, potentially leading to increased profitability.

Diversifying crops increases Canada’s climate resilience

Longstanding arguments for crop diversification have been compounded by climate-change-induced food insecurity. Increases in the frequency and severity of wildfires and droughts suggest that relying on regions like California for food imports might be poor long-term planning.

Similarly, parts of Canada face an increased risk of weather-induced crop failure. Crop species may no longer be a good match for the current climatic conditions where they’re grown. Canola and wheat, for instance, are vulnerable to drought and heat stress during the flowering period.

Crop diversification has long been used to minimize the impacts of climate insecurities in developing countries with less access to artificial irrigation and soil amendments. Switching to crops that can handle extreme weather events, like some beans, legumes and grains, could similarly increase Canada’s climate resilience. Additionally, using crop-rotation strategies based on a greater diversity of crops grown may help maintain higher yields during adverse weather.

Helping farmers embrace change

Canada is a world leader in agricultural research and ranks fifth globally with respect to articles published but is further behind when it comes to implementation on farms.

Despite the high benefit-to-cost ratios of applications of agricultural research, only 6% of Canadian farmers are willing to adopt new approaches before they have been tested at scale. Meanwhile, almost 30% are reluctant to change approaches at all.

This is hardly surprising. Change is always associated with risks. For instance, while the majority of studies show a net benefit of diversification strategies, there are huge, context-dependent variations in the outcomes. Climate, soil, crop species and microbial communities all matter in ways that can be difficult to predict.

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Most farmers do not have the resources to retool their farms for new crops and assume the risks. Many face financial struggles and rising debt. This is due in part to higher production costs and lower commodity prices caused by large corporations controlling both the sales of farm supplies and the purchase of agricultural products.

Skilled labour shortages and issues with retaining younger workers may also undermine the willingness and ability to diversify with new crops. Qualified migrant workers with agricultural backgrounds could help, but restrictive immigration policies make finding workers challenging.

Reactive government assistance that just keeps farmers above water will not address the challenges of a changing global trade environment and climate. To sustain momentum, the government needs to proactively fund targeted, large-scale feasibility studies and provide training, recruitment and transition funding for those interested in novel crop systems.

Agriculture is part of the foundation for our society. We have become accustomed to having access to plenty of fresh food, but this is not the global or historical norm.

Canada’s food supply is maintained by farmers both at home and abroad who, for generations, have worked long days at low wages to feed us. If they do not receive the support required to adapt to our changing world, we might all discover how valuable food really is.

Karen Christensen-Dalsgaard is an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at MacEwan University in Alberta. 

This story first appeared in The Conversation; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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In 2016, New York’s Elmhurst Dairy closed its doors as the last remaining fluid-milk plant in the city. The following year, under the continued leadership of second-generation owner Henry Schwartz, the company rebranded as Elmhurst 1925, shifting its focus to plant-based milks. “Established 1925. Founded 2017” is now the proud tagline of the reinvented company, which has since experienced significant growth. 

“After 92 years in business, it was time to embrace a new model and look towards the future,” Schwartz said in a press release at the time, “to lead the plant-based revolution, and create clean label products that are just as delicious and nutritionally robust as dairy milk.”

Between 2010 and 2015, the U.S. dairy-milk market experienced a notable decline, with consumers quitting milk faster than in each of the previous six decades. Public awareness of the environmental impacts and animal welfare concerns associated with traditional dairy production, as well as health risks linked to dairy consumption, helped feed a burgeoning demand for plant-based milk alternatives. This market is projected to continue on a strong upward path, with an estimated compound annual growth rate of between 7.6% to 8.9% reaching more than US$40 billion by 2033/2034. 

 The company uses a proprietary process known as HydroRelease, developed over five years by food scientist Cheryl Mitchell. HydroRelease begins with whole nuts or grains and uses water to separate the nutritional components. These components are then recombined to form a milk-like liquid that retains the original nutritional profile of the source ingredient, without the need for the gums, stabilizers or emulsifiers commonly used in other plant-based milk products on the market. The process results in products with higher protein content and cleaner labels than many of their competitors.

Additionally, all Elmhurst 1925 products are non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, dairy-free and kosher. “We do it naturally,” Mitchell says on the company’s website, “without adding junk.”

The move has paid off. Elmhurst 1925 has since experienced strong growth and within a few years of making the transition had more than tripled the number of stores where its products are sold. In January 2025, Elmhurst recorded US$35 million in annual revenue, up from $11 million in 2023.

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After Elmhurst made the switch from cows to nuts, the company rapidly diversified its offerings, creating milks from almonds, cashews, hazelnuts and walnuts. It continued to expand its range, launching milks and creamers made from oats, coconuts and pistachios.

Not all these experiments were successful – peanut milk and hemp creamer were trialled and discontinued – but the spirit of trying new things persisted, evolving beyond beverages into plant-based foods. In 2024, it launched a new oat- and hemp-based sour cream and a plant-based “chick’n” kit that allows consumers to create their own hemp-protein-based meat alternative at home. 

Elmhurst’s successful shift from dairy milk to plant-based foods reflects a significant pivot in an evolving marketplace. As consumer appetite for plant-based alternatives continues to rise, companies that meet that demand and demonstrate authentic commitment to the environment are likely to thrive. As Schwartz has said, “It’s about transforming with the times.”

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance journalist covering food, farming, animal and environmental topics for Canadian media. She is also a correspondent for Sentient, covering culture and misinformation.

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The study from environmental non-profits Changing Markets Foundation and Mighty Earth analyzed the climate plans of the United States’ and Europe’s top-grossing supermarkets, including the United Kingdom’s Tesco and Sainsbury’s, U.S. retail giant Walmart and German chains Lidl and Asda.

The meat and dairy sector is responsible for around a third of atmospheric methane and accounts for a third of all supermarket emissions. Scientists say the highly potent greenhouse gas – 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period – must be slashed by 40% to 45% by 2030 to meet climate goals.

Despite this urgency, Thursday’s analysis identified an overwhelming lack of action to tackle the powerful climate-heating gas. None of the retailers analyzed had a target in place to reduce methane, or to report on how much of the greenhouse gas they are responsible for through the products they sell.

Only five of the supermarkets surveyed had plans to boost sales of plant-based proteins, despite eating less meat and dairy being a key recommendation of climate scientists who say it’s crucial to meeting climate goals. And just six had concrete plans to reduce their overall supply chain emissions.

The report calls on all the retailers to set an ambitious target for reducing methane by at least 30% by 2030, echoing the aims of the Global Methane Pledge, a voluntary framework led by the European Union and the United States, and agreed by world leaders in 2021.

Maddy Haughton-Boakes, senior campaigner at the Changing Markets Foundation, said methane emissions were a “major blindspot” for supermarkets. “Cutting methane this decade is our emergency brake on runaway global heating, yet retailers are barely pressing it,” she said.

‘No real leaders’

The report looked at top-performing supermarkets in the United States and Europe – based on their yearly revenue, volume of grocery sales and dominance in the meat and dairy retail market.

These supermarket chains were then assessed on their ability to tackle methane against 18 indicators, including on set targets, reported emissions, and plans to scale up plant-based alternatives to animal-sourced food. Not one of the 20 retailers had plans to reduce – or even report on – their methane emissions.

The highest-scoring retailer – Tesco – scored 51 out of 100 in the assessment. Germany’s Schwarz Group – the world’s fourth-largest retailer – was in second place with just 35 points. The average score across all indicators among retailers was 20 out of a possible 100 – a rating the authors said indicated a “dismal lack of action and major room for improvement.”

Two supermarkets – the U.S chain Albertsons and Spain’s Mercadona – scored no points at all. All the U.S “big four” supermarkets – including retail titan Walmart and Albertsons, as well as Costco and Kroger – were in the bottom half.

The lack of reporting and target-setting puts retailers behind other companies in their methane ambitions.

European dairy giant Danone set a precedent for large food firms for introducing a methane-reduction goal in 2023. Other dairy companies, including French multinational cheese marketer Bel Group and the U.S subsidiary of French dairy company Lactalis, are also now reporting on their emissions.

Gemma Hoskins, global methane lead at Mighty Earth, accused supermarkets of “ignoring the methane problem in their meat and dairy aisles.”

“Retailers are uniquely positioned to urgently drive down agricultural methane emissions in their supply chains,” she said. “That starts with being honest about the impact of the products they sell and working harder and faster to reduce that impact.”

More action needed 

The report identifies an apparent “disconnect” between retailers’ ambitious climate promises and action. Nearly half (nine) of the retailers analyzed had set net-zero targets. This included the U.K.’s Tesco, which has said it aims to meet net-zero emissions across its supply chain by 2050.

Eleven supermarket chains acknowledged that emissions from animal agriculture significantly drive climate change, and several – including Casino and Tesco – suggested that increasing sales of plant-based foods could help reduce climate impacts.

However, these pledges were not accompanied by real-world actions to reduce emissions. Only six retailers had set targets to reduce Scope 3 emissions as part of their climate commitments. This category of emissions – which includes the transport, production and distribution of food – make up an estimated 93% of supermarkets’ overall climate footprints.

The report called on supermarkets to ensure that net-zero targets were accompanied by real reductions in Scope 3 emissions. Retailers should introduce a “comprehensive plan” on how to reduce emissions from across their value chains, the report argued, including time-bound near- and long-term targets for reductions in greenhouse gases.

“Given the sheer scale of meat and dairy emissions, retailers cannot credibly meet their net zero targets without tackling methane,” Hoskins of Mighty Earth told DeSmog. “Increasing plant-based products and reducing methane emissions from meat and dairy must be a core strategy for every supermarket.”

Plant-based transition 

Most retailers had no plans to increase sales of plant-based products, the report found.

Just five of the retailers surveyed – Tesco, Asda, Carrefour, Schwarz Group and Dutch supermarket group Ahold Delhaize – have set measurable targets for increasing alternative-protein sales globally. This is despite the world’s leading climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), calling for wealthier consumers to transition to more plant-based diets to tackle harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

In a 2024 analysis, the non-profit Madre Brava and the consultancy firm Profundo found that a 50% shift to plant-based proteins by six leading food retailers alone could also save emissions equivalent to removing 25 million petrol and diesel cars from the EU.

A shift to plant-based proteins also has considerable health benefits. Scientific assessments have shown that Europeans eat twice as much meat as is recommended by the “healthy diet basket” – a metric used by the United Nations as a benchmark for ideal nutritional intake.

In a landmark report last year, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that diets high in processed meats – which are linked to cancer, heart diseases and other non-communicable diseases – are responsible for 117,290 deaths across Europe.

A study published in December found that even processed plant-based products – such as veggie burgers – still offer substantial environmental, health and nutritional benefits compared to animal products, though these are even greater for unprocessed alternative proteins.

Changing Markets and Mighty Earth argued that supermarkets should take heed of the recommendations of the EAT-Lancet, a major 2019 scientific commission into climate-friendly diets, and aim to sell 60% plant-based protein products versus 40% animal-based proteins by 2030.

Food retailers should roll out attractive own-brand plant-based ranges across their stores, the authors recommended, and shift marketing and storefront efforts to promote healthy alternative proteins such as legumes and tofu over animal-based foods.

The article was first published by DeSmog. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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