Statistics Canada's recent September job market data is reassuring, overall. But for the agri-food sector, the reality is quite different. Overall, employment in the country increased in September, creating 378,000 jobs, the majority of which were full-time. This increase in September brought total employment to 720,000, shy of the level we had before the pandemic.…
Canada depends on imports for fruits and vegetables. We need to think differently about how we feed ourselves during cold months
California is on fire. Although most of the fire-affected territory has nothing to do with agriculture, the smoke is so intense that it could damage many crops. And as fall approaches, the California fires could affect Canada’s food supply for the coming months. Like the labour issues affecting Canadian farmers this summer, this is certainly…
Food manufacturing in Canada is dying a slow death. The sector has lost 12 jobs a day every day since 2012. This won’t help
Consumers got a glimpse of how food supply chains work – or don’t – at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Walmart is giving them a chilling new perspective. The sight of empty shelves in grocery stores is certainly a strong indicator at the retail level that something is amiss upstream. Reasons at the…
As the COVID-19 crisis has shown, open borders mean diseases travel more rapidly and supply chains are endangered
Pope Francis recently praised attachment to one’s own culture and place. He criticized global capitalism with its “consumerist vision of human beings” for its “levelling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage of all humanity.” But in Canada, nationalism – the idea that one should have particular regard for one’s own…
COVID-19 makes it painfully obvious that agriculture is largely misunderstood by the urban-centric Trudeau government
We always needed farmers. Now, with COVID-19, they need us. Farming needs real help, right now. Plenty of attention has been given to the foreign workers program in recent weeks. The federal government and the provinces have done the best they could to mitigate the situation. But that was just the beginning. For farmers, the…