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.

“The majority of them sent me emails to say, ‘Can I pay you maybe 50 bucks this week and 50 bucks that week because I can’t afford it, but there’s no other place I can learn these skills,’” Sundance says. She started feeling uncomfortable about charging for the program. “A lot of these people grew up in the same lifestyles as me where you didn’t have a lot of money laying around,” she says. Sundance, 27, didn’t come from a farming background but experienced food insecurity firsthand growing up in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. She fell into the agriculture industry after doing some farm work on her travels through Cuba, where she learned about the concept of food justice. Still, finding an entry point into the industry proved difficult initially as many available training or educational programs were either unpaid internships or expensive farm schools. 

Now Sundance Commons, the non-profit arm of her for-profit Sundance Harvest farm, has a new-farmer training program to teach young people, at no charge, practical skills about farming and how to start their own farms.

Sundance and her partner Jon Gagnon founded the non-profit in 2019 and originally called it Growing in the Margins. They have offered free support for new farmers in the past through their incubation program and workshops while also providing tools and resources. However, the new-farmer training is the first comprehensive educational program at Sundance Commons, providing participants a wide array of tactile skills and knowledge over 15 weeks. 

Thanks to new grants that Sundance Commons secured, the non-profit is able to have two cohorts of 20 participants each year for 2024 and 2025. So far, the applications are all from people 29 and younger, more than 50% are Black, and 95% are women or femme-identifying people.

Sundance Commons began as an 800-square-foot plot of land at Downsview Park and now operates out of four farm locations all within an hour of Toronto. The Rexdale property, located in a diverse, low-income neighbourhood, is where the majority of the new-farmer training program happens, since, unlike most farms, it’s on Toronto’s transit line. “When I started farming, I didn’t drive, and having a TTC-accessible location that has a working greenhouse, that has all the bells and whistles, that has a market garden, allows these amazing youth to really see how things work and to actually see it close by,” Sundance says. 

Participants learn how to operate tractors, prepare beds, compost, keep bees, raise poultry, operate irrigation systems, and grow a variety of vegetables and cover crops. The program also provides mentoring and checking in about participants’ future goals in the agriculture industry, giving them the technical skills needed to either get jobs in the industry or start their own farm businesses. 

When I started farming, I didn’t drive, and having a TTC-accessible location that has a working greenhouse, that has all the bells and whistles, that has a market garden, allows these amazing youth to really see how things work and to actually see it close by.

-Cheyenne Sundance

A critical element of the new-farmer training is that at the end of the program, participants can potentially gain access to land to kick-start their own operations. “That’s part of seeing it in a multi-year phase because farming is not like other kinds of industries – you kind of need time,” says Gagnon, land access coordinator at Sundance Commons. “It might take even more than a season to get a business set up; it might take three to five years.” 

Sundance and Gagnon explain that the barriers to entry are high for young people interested in farming in Ontario. The options to learn are limited to expensive farm-school courses that could cost thousands of dollars or unpaid internships on farms. 

Traditionally, farmland and knowledge has been passed down over generations. All that has changed. Today, many young people interested in farming don’t have that access to generational knowledge of farming or family land. And as a result, there are very few pathways to crack into that world and find a network of people who can help. 

According to a 2023 RBC report, 40% of Canadian farmers plan to retire in the next 10 years, and more than half of them have no plan for their land post-retirement. That means farms will face a dire labour shortage in the next decade without a younger generation of farmers ready to flow into the industry. Today, only 4.1% of Canada’s farm operators identify as racialized or Indigenous. The inaccessibility of the agricultural industry poses a huge gap for its future. “So we kind of build the connections [for young farmers] to basically try to fix that gap that has kept it inaccessible for so many,” Gagnon says. That’s a big part of why the training program “works so symbiotically with the land access,” he adds.

For Selina-Rachel Mendez, access to a support network at Sundance Commons was the real game-changer to build her beekeeping and honey business, The Drip. When she decided to pursue beekeeping, Mendez found that many workshops were dedicated to people who were just curious about it or wanted to keep bees as a hobby, and so touched only on surface-level knowledge.

 “I needed someone to really sit me down and be like, ‘Hey, here is how you need to move within a hive, here is what you need to look for to make sure that your hive is healthy, here is what you need to do throughout the course of the season to make sure that you are being sustainable and ethical with your beekeeping,” she says. 

Through Sundance, Mendez was also able to get free land access for her hives in exchange for a portion of the honey she produced.

 “When you have those connections and you have that network and that support system, it really helps you stay afloat,” she says. She now also teaches beekeeping workshops and will be doing sessions for the new-farmer training program at Sundance Commons. 

For Gagnon, training marginalized youth interested in agriculture is part of a bigger picture of ensuring that young farm workers have equity and agency, he explains. “They are the most important part of the food system.”

Neha Chollangi is a freelance journalist based in Montreal, where she covers grassroots social movements and environmental activism. 

The post How Sundance Commons is training the next generation of young, racialized farmers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In the early days of the pandemic, when pet adoptions were on the rise, he started fostering a cat. That cat quickly became two cats, and then he added another two cats. Eventually, he was fostering eight cats in his apartment. 

“And then I thought, ‘Wow, I can’t keep doubling this or this is going to be a problem. But how do I help more?’” says Bryson, who founded Unata, a software platform that connects grocers and consumers and was acquired by Instacart in 2018. “I think I just have this addiction to wanting to scale up and do more and try to have a larger impact than what I did yesterday.” 

That need to do more led him to launch Toronto-based New School Foods – an alternative seafood start-up that’s looking to offer whole plant-based fillets of salmon. The potential for alternative seafood is huge, as scientists say that wild-catch and aquaculture won’t be able to meet the world’s growing appetite for seafood. Global demand for fish products is expected to grow by 14% by 2030 compared to 2020 levels, while the United Nations says that 90% of fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels or are maxed out. Wild salmon stocks alone are on the verge of collapse in the United Kingdom, British Columbia and California, and fish farms are rife with antibiotics and disease.

Bryson’s company, which plans to launch its product in restaurants this summer, is a smallish fish in a growing pond. Alternative seafood – which includes fish and mollusks that are plant-based, lab-grown and fermented – is a nascent industry that could make up a significant chunk of future seafood demand. But key for these start-ups will be avoiding some of the pitfalls experienced by plant-based meat companies in recent years. Since the original hype around their launch, plant-based burger companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have seen their stocks plummet and sales plateau. And the (plant-based) bleeding hasn’t really stopped, as last year unit sales dropped 8%. 

Alternative seafood gets us beyond the burger and the nugget – and into future food 2.0.

 

– Marissa Bronfman, founder and executive director of Future Ocean Foods

Bryson and other innovators are cautiously optimistic that things will be different for them and that it’s only a matter of time before a tidal wave of plant-based seafood washes up on our shores. 

“Alternative seafood gets us beyond the burger and the nugget – and into future food 2.0,” says vegan impact investor Marissa Bronfman, the founder and executive director of Future Ocean Foods, an alternative seafood association launched last fall and headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with, to date, 36 companies in 14 countries. “It also gets us outside of North America. More than three billion people around the world look to seafood as their primary protein source. The potential is enormous.”

A plant-based pioneer goes fishy

New innovators are entering the alternative fish space, but it’s also attracting familiar faces from the plant-based protein world. In 2020, Yves Potvin, of Yves Veggie Cuisine fame, started a Richmond, B.C.–based alternative seafood venture called Konscious Foods that makes plant-based sushi and poke bowls. Konscious Foods closed a $26-million seed funding round last year, attracting investments from Protein Industries Canada (an industry-led not-for-profit that invests in Canadian plant-protein start-ups) and now has products in the freezer aisles of 4,500 retailers across North America, including Whole Foods. 

Potvin has said that to grow and scale, plant-based products must be nutritious, affordable, convenient and taste good. With Konscious Foods, he’s managed to figure out how he can make a decent product and keep the price comparable to traditional sushi. “One of the biggest challenges in [the] plant-based [industry] is that the products are often 20 to 50% more expensive, so not only do consumers have to sacrifice on taste and the texture, they have to spend more money,” Potvin told AgFunderNews. “We are the first in the marketplace at the same price [as conventional seafood products]. So we’re ticking all the right boxes.”

The taste–price equation

Surveys show that taste and price have been big barriers to selling consumers on plant-based products. While the taste of these products has come a long way in recent years, burgers from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are still far more expensive than beef burgers. Observers say it’s only a matter of time before these prices come down as more people buy the products, but investors are growing anxious. 

Plant-based seafood might have an advantage on its price point over the alternative meats as fish typically is more expensive than many meats. A number of the start-ups in this area are also making products that mimic higher-quality cuts and types of fish and seafood. “How do we compete on price? We compete on price by going after these ultra-premium fish and cuts and looking to see if we can get there first before extending the technology down further along the price curve,” says Casey Silver, a senior analyst at McKinsey & Company who co-authored a recent report that outlined some of alternative seafood’s challenges and advantages. 

Some observers question whether this focus on high-end cuts, however, may pose problems for the scalability of the industry and its ability to fill the growing demand for cheaper seafood in the broader market. But Silver says this is simply a way to prove the technology before moving on to other cuts and types of fish. “This is a way to get everything as far down that price curve as we can before needing to go up against the tilapias and white fishes, which isn’t to say other companies aren’t doing that, because they are.”

Alternative seafood also has a much wider range of products it can emulate than the land animals that are typically farmed. This is both an opportunity and a challenge, as an alternative for each individual type of seafood with its own taste profile will need to be carefully crafted and fine-tuned so that consumers accept it. 

New School Foods’ alternative salmon fillet, which was developed in partnership with researchers at Toronto Metropolitan University, will make its debut at restaurants before hitting the retail market. Bryson says he wants to win over chefs before consumers. “I think we need to earn the . . . respect of chefs before we can convince people we are worthy of being on their dinner plate,” he says.

But is it healthy?

While studies have shown that plant-based burgers are healthier than beef burgers, some consumers have been scared away by the long ingredient lists on their labels and the idea that plant-based prepared foods are “ultra-processed.” Advocates concede that, no, plant-based burgers are not health products, but they are, for the most part, healthier than meat. 

Bryson says the salmon fillet product that New School Foods is making will be inherently healthier than a traditional piece of salmon because of the mercury, microplastics and other contaminants present in real fish. New School Foods also plans to include some of the nutritional benefits, such as omega-3 fats, that are in real salmon. 

Swimming upstream

Investments in the alternative seafood sector grew 92% from 2021 to 2022, according to Future Ocean Foods. Retail sales have grown steadily in North America, and some big food companies, such as Cargill and Nestlé, have dipped their toes into the space. Despite the growth, investors have been cautious about putting their money into the alternative seafood space after what happened with plant-based meat. But there is optimism that it’s only a matter of time before alternative proteins flourish. From 2021 to 2022, alternative seafood saw a 42% growth in retail sales in the United States.      

It remains to be seen whether the alternative seafood sector, and the broader plant-based protein industry, will come to dominate the market. But if the world is going to feed 10 billion people by 2050, and do so sustainably, there might be no other option.

“This is a huge task, requiring enormous amounts of public and private capital,” Bronfman says. “We have brilliant people all over the world creating meaningful solutions to problems, but they need more support.”

Alex Robinson is deputy editor at Corporate Knights. 

Check back here as we roll out our Plant Power package this week, along with the release of the 2024 Spring issue of Corporate Knights.

The post Will alternative seafood sink or swim? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It’s part of a growing wave of cities around the world that have been signalling an understanding that food can’t be ignored when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis. (Livestock agriculture is responsible for 14.5% to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.)  

The Plant Based Treaty now has 26 municipalities pledging to take the matter seriously. The treaty is non-binding, but as the Scottish capital Edinburgh stated when it signed on last year, it “represents a public acknowledgement that food production and consumption are key drivers of the climate crisis.” Other cities that have signed on include Los Angeles; Didim, Turkey; Kyotera, Uganda; Norwich, U.K., and 15 cities in India, where nearly four in 10 people identify as vegetarian, the highest rate in the world.  

The treaty is modelled after the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty – a global agreement to phase out oil and gas production. Among the Plant Based Treaty’s goals are halting deforestation attributed to animal agriculture, pushing for subsidies that incentivize a plant-based food system, and freeing up land to rewild and reforest the earth.  

“Rapidly reducing animal agriculture and shifting humanity to a plant-based diet is one of the best, easiest and fastest things we can do to save the planet,” NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus told USA Today in December. “It will also buffer food security in a time of increasing crop failures due to global heating. The world needs a Plant Based Treaty.” 

From handing out veggie hot dogs at climate conferences to lobbying politicians and universities, the group is gaining traction, garnering some 135,000 signatures to back its pledges. “Our theory of change is to create grassroots, bottom-up pressure on governments to negotiate a global treaty,” the group said in a video that outlined the gains made in 2023.  

Not all cities have followed up their public plant-based pledges with concrete actions. But Edinburgh has been a leader, unveiling earlier this year its “Plant Based Treaty action plan,” designed to shape diets through menu changes in schools, hospitals and nursing homes; carbon labels on food served at an Edinburgh university; and public education campaigns. Primary-school cafeterias already have one meat-free day a week in Edinburgh, and vegetarian or vegan options are available every day. There’s also been more emphasis on buying local fruits and vegetables, along with fostering community gardens.  

“I want to be clear that this does not seek to eliminate meat and dairy,” Edinburgh Council leader Cammy Day said in a statement earlier this year. “It’s not about removing freedom of choice, but about increasing availability and awareness of plant-based options.” 

For Amsterdam, which is aiming to see 60% of the protein in its residents’ diets plant-based by 2030, the motivation is explicit. “The consumption of more plant-based proteins is better for our health,” the motion expressing support for the treaty stated. “It is also better for our climate impact by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing land use and depletion of oceans.”   

And for those who use other barometers to measure change, there’s always McDonald’s, which last year started placing plant-based burgers above meat ones on their menus in the Netherlands. 

The post Amsterdam is the latest city to throw its weight behind Plant Based Treaty appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But this rethinking of agriculture needs to go bigger and bolder, fast, according to a new study, released last week by the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC), which spells out in sobering detail the social, economic and environmental costs of the current global food system – and the potential savings of a radical food systems overhaul. 

“In short, our food systems are destroying more value than they create,” says the report, the result of a four-year investigation led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Cornell University and the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative. 

Food innovation has pulled off a remarkable feat, working to feed a global population that has doubled since 1970. But there are also a litany of “unaccounted costs” that fuel some of the greatest challenges we live with, from climate change to hunger, disease and inequality.  

The current cost of these unintended harms on people and the planet amount to a staggering US$15 trillion a year, or the equivalent of 12% of the global gross domestic product in 2020, the researchers found. The commission estimates that $11 trillion of that cost is attached to health, measured through the negative effect that diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer – which can be linked to food – have on labour productivity. Another $3 trillion a year is tied to the impact of agricultural-land-use and food-production practices on ecosystems and climate. These practices account for one-third of global greenhouse emissions, including deforestation that makes way for crops and livestock.  

The report authors analyzed a model of food-system transformation that they contend is a “uniquely powerful means of addressing the global climate, nature and health emergencies while offering a better life to hundreds of millions of people.” It includes a call to shift our diets to ones that are more plant-based, and limit consumption of sugars, meat and dairy. They say it is a path that would eliminate undernutrition by 2050 and prevent the premature death of 174 million people. Farmers would earn a better living, forests and biodiversity would be protected, and demand for irrigation water would plummet. The net benefits on incomes and reduced costs of this transformation amounts to US$5 to $10 trillion a year, they report.  

“The economic and planetary case for transforming our food systems is compelling,” the authors note. “But negotiating change across a multitude of diverse stakeholders with unequal power and varying prospects from the transformation is an enormous challenge.” 

Another study released last week, by the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, shows that Canada, in particular, is failing to invest enough in sustainable agriculture. The report calls on the federal government to allocate more funds to research, on the private sector to push for more favourable investment opportunities, and for a shift in intellectual property rights that could also spur more investment. The report notes that spending on agricultural innovation in Canada has declined 70% since 1986 and urges lawmakers to see that spending rise to 0.10% of GDP.  

In short, our food systems are destroying more value than they create.

 

– Food System Economics Commission

If nothing changes by 2050, food insecurity and undernutrition will continue to be major problems that leave 640 million people hungry worldwide, including 121 million children, according to the FSEC. India, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia will be hit especially hard.  

Climate change, which is already wreaking havoc on food production, will pack even more of a punch as extreme weather events become more frequent. This will create a domino effect in rising food prices that increasingly stretch the middle and lower classes, the report says, noting also that the current food system exposes workers to particularly low wages.  

Changing our food systems will require a global investment of between US$200 billion and $500 billion a year until 2050, a number the report says is “low compared to its economic benefits.” Much of that covers investments in rural infrastructure, including roads, irrigation expansion and access to energy; the protection and restoration of forests; reducing food waste; and supporting a dietary shift. Working in tandem with a low-carbon energy system, the food revolution “can ensure that global warming stays well below 1.5 degrees C at the end of this century,” the report states.  

The FSEC report calls on governments to shift incentives in agriculture production away from a focus on big producers that often are linked to harmful environmental practices. Taxing carbon and nitrogen pollution are two ways to turn food systems into net carbon sinks, it argues. The new revenues from those taxes should be directed into benefits for poorer households that might be struggling to eat, which in turn will drum up political support for the systemic transformations that need to happen.  

There is also more that national and international organizations can do to incentivize food innovation, especially in low- and middle-income countries, such as supporting low-emission farming systems or developing digital technologies that are useful to small-scale farmers. And, finally, government social safety nets need to keep the poorest in mind. Cash transfers distributed by governments through digital payment systems can target vulnerable populations – and children should be at the centre of these strategies, the report notes.   

For the experts at the FSEC, the biggest piece of the puzzle is changing what we eat. The impact of choosing healthier diets on well-being and land use accounts for 70% of the benefits of transforming food systems. On the other hand, what we eat – diets that are high in fats, sugars, salt and ultra-processed foods – will increase obesity by 70%, and 1.5 billion will struggle with obesity by 2050. The authors project that the cost of treating obesity will skyrocket to US$3 trillion by 2030.  

The report warns authorities to be mindful of the ripple effects of transformation, so as not to pit the winners and losers of the immediate change against one another. Fears over food affordability can get in the way of taking action, while transformation may affect the jobs that a community is used to relying on. That’s why developing downstream industries that complement the shift, especially in low-income countries, is crucial.   

“Daunting as the challenges of transforming food systems may be, there are reasons to be hopeful,” the report states, pointing to successes in Latin America, for example, where groups lobbied to raise taxes on sugary beverages despite corporate opposition. “Addressing squarely the concerns that shape policymakers’ vision of what is possible offers a pathway to reap large benefits for people and planet.” 

The post Fixing our ailing food system could bring US$10 trillion a year in benefits appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It’s a small but meaningful step,” says Lori Stahlbrand, the co-developer behind the first four-year honours bachelor program of its kind in Canada. “[We] are trying to move the needle on sustainability in any way that we can. Food is such a big part of this.”

The world’s food systems are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Most of that comes from agriculture, land use and changes in land use, the FAO says, with 39% attributed to processes, including the use of fertilizers. Methane from livestock and rice cultivation accounts for another 35%. But food can also be a way forward, Stahlbrand says. Certified organic food is grown without pesticides or fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers.

“We know that young people are experiencing high levels of eco-anxiety, defined as a chronic fear of environmental doom,” says Stahlbrand, who teaches the program’s Introduction to Food Movements. The process of getting the organic designation gave them hands-on experience and a closer understanding of the local food industry.

“These students are going to be some of the leaders of tomorrow,” Stahlbrand says. “They might be working at food non-profits, as policy advisors, as chefs, as managers in a restaurant. So it’s important to prepare them to operationalize meaningful change in the food sector.”

Through collaborating with the Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts and local vendors, students were able to increase the amount of certified organic food in more than 300 culinary arts classes every week beginning in March 2023.

[We] are trying to move the needle on sustainability in any way that we can. Food is such a big part of this.

 

– Lori Stahlbrand, George Brown College food studies program co-developer

The program’s operations manager, Joey Ma, says that roughly 10% of the produce purchases have been organic since the initiative began. The program has purchased more than 5,000 pounds of organic produce, including herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, pineapple and onions.

Second-year student Ronna Manalo says the goal was to “purchase as much local food as possible” while also working with the school’s budget, understanding which distributors could produce enough volume for a large institution, and addressing the culinary program’s needs. “It was a lot of communication back and forth for an entire semester,” she says.

Nova Scotia’s Acadia University was the first school to achieve the organic designation. Since then, several other schools, including Queen’s University, have been in talks with COTA to see how they could also achieve Organic Campus status, says Tia Loftsgard, COTA’s executive director. For Loftsgard, having a school go organic carries significant weight. “Youth are the future and want to make sustainable changes. Organic is the root to that change,” she says.

Ramona Leitao is a freelance multimedia journalist based in Toronto.

The post Top Chef: How George Brown’s prestigious chef school went organic appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The effects of the temporary closure of a troubled Similac supply factory in Michigan in early 2022 continued to be felt late in the year, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a plan to enhance its surveillance of infant formula for a harmful bacteria called Cronobacter.

Experts say the concentration of 90% of the U.S. baby formula market in the hands of just three companies – Abbott, Reckitt Benckiser and now Perrigo (which bought Nestlé’s formula division) – is a major weakness of the industry. But while dairy-based-formula manufacturers and consumers face ongoing supply chain challenges, a novel product is gaining momentum.

Much like lab-grown meat and dairy, cell-cultured human milk is produced in a laboratory without the use of the traditional source, in this case lactating humans. The process for reproducing human milk varies from company to company but generally involves culturing milk-producing mammary epithelial cells obtained from donated breast milk and tissue.

While a lab-grown chicken product was just deemed safe for human consumption by the FDA in late November, cell-cultured human milk has yet to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world. Regardless, investors and researchers at half a dozen companies are hoping to disrupt the heavily monopolized dairy-based-formula market and say their innovative products have the potential to offer parents another supplementary option when breastfeeding isn’t possible or is not enough.

Michelle Egger, the co-founder and CEO of North Carolina–based Biomilq, says North America’s formula shortage raised a lot of questions about the industry. “It’s a great time, as a disrupter, to be a part of those conversations,” she says.

Biomilq is doing much more than conversing. In 2020, the female-led start-up raised US$3.5 million in series A funding from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy, an investment firm focused on climate solutions. By October 2021, the company closed the funding round with US$21 million from Breakthrough and others, including Europe’s first all-female-led fund, Green Generation Fund.

Curbing the carbon footprint of formula market

Interest from sustainability-minded investors stems from the potential for lab-grown breast milk to “alleviate the climate impacts of bovine-based infant formula,” as Green Generation Fund puts it. Dairy production comes with a hefty environmental footprint. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, milk production alone contributes 2.9% of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. One study that focused on the emissions of powdered formula specifically, published in the journal Breastfeeding Medicine, found that in 2016, sales of powdered baby formula were responsible for 70,256 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in Canada, 435,820 tons in Mexico and 655,956 tons in the U.S. That equates to more than 1.16 million tons of CO2e, which is more than the amount emitted by cars and trucks driving through Manhattan in a year.

“There are so many households and families trying to reduce their carbon footprint and tackling it in any way they can, but there aren’t great options when breastfeeding isn’t working for you,” says Egger.

The company estimates that Biomilq could displace approximately 20 million megatons of CO2e annually by 2028 based on current technological capabilities and assumptions for market capture.

Ultimately, the degree of emissions displaced will depend largely on the efficiency of Biomilq’s commercial manufacturing process, which is still being developed.

Breast is best. Is lab-grown second best?

The sustainability factor of lab-grown breast milk is for Egger “the cherry on top” of a product that she maintains is also nutritionally superior to conventional formula. She notes that while dairy-based infant formulas can provide all the essential macronutrients that an infant needs, “studies show that conventional formulas fall short of providing the full constellation of components that make breast milk so extraordinary.”

Biomilq co-founder Leila Strickland, a cellular biologist who herself struggled with breastfeeding, told The Guardian that compared to dairy-based formula, Biomilq’s product more closely matches breast milk’s proportions of protein, fats and carbohydrates. However, the company doesn’t claim that its product will mimic all the advantages of breast milk, including certain hormones, healthy bacteria and antibodies. “That’s a part of breast milk we won’t be able to replicate,” she said.

For those families looking to soy-based formula as a means to cut their eco-impact, Egger notes that soy, along with dairy, is one of the most common childhood allergies. “Our product will not be soy- or dairy-based, cutting down on allergen exposure while providing another choice, more similar to breast milk, in order to meet infant nutritional needs.”

Global race for winning formula

Across the globe, Israel’s Wilk, a publicly traded company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, is also banking on the sustainability of cell-cultured milk and is developing both human and animal-based products.

In operation since 2020, Wilk holds patents on laboratory production processes “that replicate the milk-producing cells of humans and other mammals to create 100% real milk and milk components in laboratory settings,” according to a statement.

In 2021, Wilk banked US$2 million from Coca-Cola Israel (operating as The Central Bottling Company) to develop lab-cultured milk products. This past November, the company announced that it had developed what it said was the “world’s first yogurt developed with cell-cultured milk fat from cows along with other plant-based components.” The technology will also help the company develop cell-cultured human milk fat for infant formula and replace the vegetable fats in baby formulas.

There are so many families trying to reduce their carbon footprint and tackling it in any way they can, but there aren’t great options when breastfeeding isn’t working for you.

-Michelle Egger, co-founder and CEO, Biomilq

In June, Wilk announced it had successfully produced the breast-milk protein lactoferrin in its lab. “This breakthrough brings us one step closer to our goal of providing all infants with the full range of nutritional benefits that can only be found in breast milk,” Wilk CEO Tomer Aizen said in a press release.

There are at least two other companies attempting to enter the lab-grown breast milk space, including New York–based Helaina, which has raised US$24.6 million in funding to date. Rather than working with donated milk and tissue, Helaina says that it’s programming yeast to ferment into breast milk proteins.

Due date up in the air

The question of when and if cell-based human milk will be available to consumers remains unclear. “We are positioned to be able to be successful and to move forward, but there is a lot out of our control,” Egger says. “We took an incredibly challenging technology basis and applied it to one of the hardest problems we face as human beings; it is unsurprising that it is not for the faint of heart.”

For now, Egger and her team are building consumer trust. “There is a lot of education, discussion and collaboration that has to happen … We know, frankly, that a novel production method for a product that is for infants and toddlers is challenging for a lot of people; our technology sounds a little bit like pigs flying.”

If all goes well, within three to five years, lab-grown breast milk could offer a new option for parents and caregivers looking to avoid dairy-based formulas, whether for environmental, animal welfare or allergy-related reasons. Breast milk will always be best, but for struggling mothers, lab-cultured breast milk might eventually become a close second.

The post Could lab-grown breast milk be the way to decarbonize baby formula? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

According to BetterCart, a data mining company that monitors food prices across the country daily, some of the common items at this year’s Thanksgiving meal will be significantly more expensive than they were last year. Expect your potatoes and butter to cost 25.6% and 19.1% more, respectively. 

Food price inflation affects all Canadians regardless of their dietary preferences, or incomes. Currently, the food inflation rate in Canada is close to 5%. Every year, the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie releases Canada’s Food Price Report, in partnership with the University of British Columbia, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Guelph, which predicts food price inflation. The 2021 report forecasts that overall food prices will increase by up to 5%, well above the normal rate of 1 to 2%, describing the food price situation we are witnessing right now across the country. 

And price increases could affect many Thanksgivings to come, as the climate emergency wreaks havoc on our food systems. 

Drivers of food price inflation

Many common staples of Canadian diets, including meat, bread and centre-of-the-store grocery items, have increased in price because of myriad complicated macroeconomic shocks. Supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, labour shortages experienced by Canadian trading partners, and rising freight costs contribute to higher prices on grocery store shelves.

As Canada reaches its vaccine thresholds, demand for food, from restaurants as well as from a revival in home cooking, has put pressure on the prices of both meat and feed grains such as soybeans or corn, in addition to other popular items in retail stores. 

We also have the climate emergency to thank for food inflation. Recent reports suggest Canada is warming at twice the global rate. The wildfires in British Columbia, drought conditions in the Prairies, increased tornado activity in Ontario and Quebec, and more-active-than-normal hurricane seasons in the Atlantic have all impacted the food supply chain. 

Drought in the Prairies has led to smaller harvests of feed grains and produce, as water scarcity and heat become an issue for both farmers and their livestock. This has forced farmers to temporarily reduce the size of their herds, causing meat prices to increase significantly. Wildfires in California and British Columbia impact the price of regional fruit and vegetables at retail as much seasonal and out-of-season produce is imported from those regions. 

How agriculture is driving the climate emergency

Despite efforts in recent years, global agriculture remains a high-carbon, energy-heavy endeavour. Almost 8% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agricultural practices. Heavy equipment powered by fossil fuels is needed to till fields, plant seeds, apply fertilizers, harvest, and transport meat, grains or produce to their next stop on the supply chain. Industrial livestock operations can release high levels of nitrogen and methane. Nitrogen fertilizer, commonly used on Canadian farms, produces nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

There are steps farmers can take to reduce the sector’s impacts on climate, which would help ensure food prices don’t get out of control in the future. These include using lower-carbon fertilizers and fuel sources and methane-capture systems for livestock and manure.

These significant price increases could affect many Thanksgivings to come, as the climate emergency wreaks havoc on our food systems.

While the agriculture sector takes steps to reduce its carbon footprint, diets lower in meat and higher in sustainable produce offer a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing consumer household food waste could lower emissions and improve food security and potentially lower prices at retail. From 2010 to 2016, global food waste contributed 8 to 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

To stem the rise of prices in the short-term, governments must also work to remove restrictions and bottlenecks on imports caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Items found on grocery store shelves are often imported, or wrapped in packaging that’s imported. Prices on these items rise as they are held up at borders because of restrictions on the personnel responsible for moving them. And the supply chain is still recovering from the closure of processing plants, both in Canada and abroad.

No end in sight for adverse weather effects

There is no one sector that is solely responsible for the carbon emissions that have led to the climate situation we are experiencing now. We can expect this to be the new normal. Indeed, record heat waves that are longer than a week’s duration will be two to seven times more likely. These record temperatures create the dry conditions that spark wildfires and water shortages and the increased frequency of weather events such as large hurricanes and tornadoes that ravage farms and disrupt food supply chains around the world, forcing food prices to rise year after year. 

Increased food prices affect everyone, but those consumers who are close to the poverty line or who have had their incomes disrupted by the pandemic will experience greater challenges as they try to stretch their grocery dollars. Women and people of colour, in particular, will feel the pinch of rising food costs. Yet food simply cannot be priced out of reach of vulnerable people.

While food inflation is impacted by a wide array of complicated factors, there’s no denying climate change is making food prices more volatile. Farmers continue to feed the world despite the impacts of the climate emergency. They can be a part of the solution by adopting practices that mitigate the release of greenhouse gases. Without bold action on climate, Thanksgiving dinner may be out of reach for an increasing number of people in the future. 

Janet Music is a research program coordinator at the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.

Sylvain Charlebois is the senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.

The post Is food inflation here to stay? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that the contentious laws will bring much-needed private sector investment into a key segment of the economy – by loosening regulations that deal with the stocking, pricing and selling of produce. But dissidents maintain that it will only worsen their condition – eroding the safety that is guaranteed by minimum support prices (MSPs) for some crops and handing over more power to large agribusinesses.

Agriculture makes up 18% of India’s GDP and employs more than 60% of its population, most of whom are small, marginal farmers (owning less than five acres of land). As the climate emergency exacerbates an ongoing agrarian crisis the world over, these farmers’ livelihoods are increasingly at risk.

By not consulting the very people it purported to help, and by rushing the bills through India’s Parliament during the first pandemic-induced lockdown, the government has sown mistrust among its constituents, who are demanding the complete repeal of the new laws and a legal guarantee for the MSP system.

Implicit in the laws is a vision to follow the agricultural models of developed countries like the U.S. and Canada, both of which are dominated by large-scale, industrialized farming operations run by a declining number of farmers who are dependent upon heavy chemical and mechanical inputs. In India, this would mean opening the farm gates to corporate agribusinesses increasing production of cash crops at the cheapest prices, replicating the Green Revolution model of agriculture that relies on high-yielding varieties of seeds, large-scale use of pesticides and fertilizers, and monocropping. These methods, introduced in India’s fertile northern plains in the 1960s, are now widely known to be ecologically harmful. And the Green Revolution 2.0, as it’s being called, is not expected to raise farmers’ incomes (currently the equivalent of about $150 per month), despite the government’s 2018 promise to double farm incomes by 2022.

“The markets have failed everywhere in the world to provide farmers with assured prices,” says Devinder Sharma, an expert on global agricultural policy. “We cannot expect the same markets to do a remarkable job or be benevolent in India. The only way forward is to provide farmers with an assured income.” Indigenous farmers, peasants and agricultural workers in several countries – including Spain, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines – are also protesting a long history of policies that sideline them. This is a discontent that has been building over decades the world over.

In February 2021, after long months of being at odds with the government, farmers in Spain finally got a law enacted that prohibits the sale of food below the cost of production. This makes sense intuitively but rarely happens in the world of agriculture, where countries pump massive subsidies into their agricultural sectors to keep prices low.

“If Spain can do it, I think the rest of the world can also do it. If it violates the market’s supply and demand, so what? Markets can adjust,” Sharma says, citing the age-old business-community uproar against the movement for increased minimum wages. “But civil society and labour movements everywhere went on insisting, and today we have a minimum wage. So if we have a minimum price for farm produce, the market will adjust. We have done enough damage to farming populations across the world.”

Once farmers are assured of the support prices they need, they’re enabled to practise a more sustainable form of agriculture that remunerates them fairly and feeds people nutritious food. This could segue into climate-smart farming, but these solutions don’t make sense without the bedrock of assured income. Farmers aren’t likely to shift from growing water-intensive rice to more climate-resilient crops or embrace intercropping (mixing crop types rather than monocropping), no-till or more traditional climate-smart methods if the financial risks of changing their practices aren’t reduced.

As the second wave of COVID-19 overwhelms India’s health infrastructure with oxygen shortages and a slow vaccine rollout, too many lives have already been lost. Still, protesting farmers are staying put.

The world is watching.

In April 2021, at its annual convention, Canada’s New Democratic Party passed a resolution to stand with India’s farmers and condemn their government’s actions. Soon after, Vancouver City Council passed a motion urging the provincial and federal governments to speak out against the three laws.

It is time for the government of India, even as it is failing its citizens through this healthcare crisis, to do right by its food producers. “The government should take a policy decision at this time to keep these laws in abeyance or withdraw them, and assure farmers that if they go back, we will start afresh again,” Sharma says. A fresh start that centres on the dignity and right to a fair livelihood for India’s farmers.

Mukta Patil is a freelance journalist working in India and the U.S.

The post Seeds of dissent appeared first on Corporate Knights.