The Future of Agriculture and Food
Aug 15, 2022 12:00 PM
Art Froehlich
The Future of Agriculture and Food

Meeting will open for entry at 11:30 AM MDT and begin at 12:00 PM MDT.

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Canadians have never viewed the agriculture and food industries as being important.  There are some good reasons for this. Agricultural producers represent only 2-3% of the votes in this country, so it is very difficult to capture the attention of our political leaders – both provincially and federally.  But perhaps a more important reason is that the Canadian food consumer spends a very small percentage of their disposable income on food at approximately 10-11% and next to the United States this is the lowest in the world.  Canadians simply have the highest quality and an abundant supply of food at very low prices.  This however has changed in recent months as we see the cost to the consumer rising rapidly and now has become much more top of mind with the citizens of Canada.  There are a number of reasons for this, global weather issues, climate change, and recent civil unrest in many parts of the world predominately the Russian Ukrainian war.  These production related issues have been exacerbated with significant supply chain issues and supply shortages of fertilizer, and a lot of the inputs that farmers need to maximize crop production.  The  thing I find most frustrating is that many jurisdictions around the world have begun to make very significant demands on how farmers should produce the food we are so dependent upon.