In a context of high food inflation, concentration in the food sector is unprecedented: five chains which share 80% of the market have generated record profits in the last two years.
While the Trudeau government summons the big bosses of this oligopoly, the media is buzzing about the solutions to consider: focusing on discount stores, introducing more competition among retailers, forcing a price freeze, subsidizing consumers …
Few voices are being raised, however, to propose a solution that much further strengthens the resilience of our food system as a whole: local agriculture.
Certainly, the Union of Agricultural Producers and the Food Transformation Council of Quebec (CTAQ) recently stated, rightly, that the solution lay in including farmers and processors in the discussion.
But we must go further. The challenges of our food system go far beyond the monetary accessibility of food. Large-scale distribution is undermining our food system by favoring the cheapest products, generating the largest profit margins, to the detriment of the preservation of resources, the dignity of farmers and public health. Not even a Food Industry Code of Conduct will fix this.
To get out of the impasse, local agriculture constitutes a real transversal solution. By promoting direct transactions between farmers and citizens, it is possible to provide accessible, fresh, healthy and seasonal food while returning a greater share of the price paid to the people who produced it. It is possible to invest this added value directly in the transformation of agricultural practices, labor remuneration, and the fight against and adaptation to climate change.
Citizens and farmers alike have their part to do in adopting short circuits. But, as with the transition of transport modes, we also need a strong political vision and a redirection of public funds which are currently mobilized in conventional production, transformation and distribution models.
Let’s stop confining local agriculture to bucolic images. In our daily lives as in our public policies, let’s make local agriculture the cornerstone of our food resilience.