Agriculture Myth Busting
Canada is a net food exporter, meaning for the most part, we grow and raise more than the country needs. This statement is made very generically, as Canada is incredibly reliant on foreign nations for processing; however, the point of the statement is to highlight the importance of globalization in agriculture. Often, images of long supply chains are also conjured in these discussions. In North America, food can travel up to 4,000 kilometres from the field to the kitchen island, passing through the hands of between four and six players before you get to enjoy it. But are middlemen of the food system maintaining the sustainability standards Canadians ask for? Without knowing for sure, local production appears to be the best way to build a food and farm connection while ensuring sustainable quality.
Between home gardens and buying seasonally, local food is frequently touted as a way to improve consumption sustainability. Local, however, is a subjective term – to some, it means Canadian, while to others, it refers to whatever can be sourced at a farmer’s or public market. In some cases, it may be a meaningless title, like calling coffee “local” because the beans are roasted in-house. That creates quite the range. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has incompletely defined the term as food sold in the province or territory where it was produced or within 50 kilometres of where it was produced. Although the province/territory boundary seems to fit farmer logistics best (as is the case with Saskatoon’s Farmers’ Market), and a survey of short supply chain producers found 65 kilometres between field and retail to be a more realistic median distance.
Regardless of the exact radius, local production is typically associated with improved environmental sustainability, namely, fewer food miles (i.e. the complete distance a food molecule travels throughout the supply chain). Additionally, short supply chains imply community-level food security and transparency, as individuals can directly communicate with the responsible farmer. This is the case for the majority of Canadian farmers involved in shorter supply chains, as 84% directly sell their goods to individual consumers, and just over 62% do so by participating in farmers’ markets. As a result, just under half of the surveyed Canadians perceived local farmer support as a dominant benefit of sustainable food choices.
The Generalization Problem
Unfortunately, these comments are based on a variety of assumptions, including that 7.8% of farmers participating in local food distribution are producing (holistically) sustainably and that all supply chains behave the same. Public markets have site-specific standards, if any do exist, potentially limiting market transparency. A 2017 investigation by CBC News found that vendors at Ontario farmers’ markets need not have any involvement in the produce they are selling; some were resellers of true local farmers, while others were found to purchase and sell commercially grown grocery store produce as “local.” I do not mention this to discourage anyone from locally marketed food or from engaging in farmers’ markets, but it is important to take advantage of the communication available at those outlets that can improve food literacy and ensure quality.
There is extreme variation among farms, from the goods produced to how they’re grown, to resource availability and community flexibility. Despite frightening figures like how all fruit imported to Canada contributes a quarter of our total annual food miles, food miles, in general, represent a relatively small portion of production emissions. Travel differences alone are not enough to claim that local distribution is more sustainable. While identifying individual farms that may be employing every sustainability tool available, claiming every small operation is more socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable than operations that sell to grocery stores is ignorant of production realities. For this blog, we’re going to continue assuming the social sustainability component of local food sales is already well-established, leaving only the environmental and economic weaknesses to address.
Fundamentally, local production is about supporting the small (non-commercial) farmer, ensuring agricultural land remains productive and remote food availability improves. As briefly discussed in April’s food security blog, Canada’s North faces both economic and physical food accessibility challenges, forcing many communities to rely heavily on shelf-stable options, government support, and imported food. Improving production robustness by way of community/farm investment and creating market opportunities (i.e. with value-added and processing) may benefit Canada’s reliance on neighbours. Although meaningful financial support and local policy are lacking, federal-provincial cost-shared programs like the Local Food Infrastructure Fund are one way to approach independence, providing millions in grants to small remote communities wanting to build some capacity.
Canadian Realisms
Supply chain disruptions and general politics in recent years have made local production a much more attractive venture. Canada is already self-sufficient in its supply managed commodities like chicken and yogurt, and, following the COVID-19 pandemic, local communities economically recovered faster than those that were more globalized. However, wanting Canada to be completely self-reliant subscribes to the food sovereignty philosophy: that food should be sourced from within national borders because it is one of the only ways to prioritize domestic farmer livelihoods and their rights to choose what/how to produce. The issue is that, although Canada is an agricultural powerhouse, logistically, our food production is limited.
The Canadian growing season is short, running approximately from April to August. Climate change-related challenges in the field do not disappear because the operation gets smaller; it just makes resilience harder. Our country is great when it comes to grains, oilseeds, and red meat, but the climate-growing season combination makes our produce comparatively dismal. Fewer days of production and a serious (perishable) storage problem mean Canada imports about 50% and 75% of our fruits and vegetables, respectively, to ensure year-round availability. Canada is very likely to remain in a product deficit in those areas. Increasing processing capacity could improve the shelf-life problem of food; however, it would further increase food prices and may also compromise the ‘local’ status of the goods, depending on where the processing facility is located. Similarly, solutions like plastic packaging or biotechnology that could improve quality and accessibility come with their environmental trade-offs and, especially in the case of agricultural technologies, can be discouraged by nongovernmental organizations.
With so many risks, it may seem curious that farmers continue the sustainability fight through local channels, especially in rural communities where resource availability is tighter. We need to remember that grocery stores are low-margin businesses, making profits predominantly through volume sales, and conforming to operational standards and product regulations to ensure food safety. Small farms, conversely, are able to meet neither the product standardization nor volume requirements of larger commercial operations, limiting the ability of local production systems to enter mainstream retail or scale up to widespread adoption.
Cost of Farm Size
Besides the convenience and patron connection, when asked, nearly a third of farmers participating in local distribution stated it was the appeal of a price margin higher than commercially available. Not only is there a consumer willingness to pay for sustainable goods, but phrases like “homegrown,” “chemical free,” and “organic” are marketing tactics that, in local production, don’t necessarily require the same proof or certification but come with a premium. As such, local food has a reputation for costing more. This can be partially attributed to economies of scale and production differences, as larger productions are better able to access resources and technologies that reduce the cost of production (including producing in bulk). Take strawberries (which Canada imports 7.5 times as many as we produce) for the first week of June 2025: in the same Saskatoon grocery store I can, on sale, buy 340g of British Columbian greenhouse-grown berries for $6 or, I could buy more than twice as many from the USA or Mexico at its regular price (12 cents cheaper). This is anecdotal.
The truth is Canada has a very real data problem, which extends into the local space, meaning that making any kind of blanket statement about local costs is naïve, since sales information and local product quality are unavailable. Overall, Canadian food is getting more expensive in part because the cost of production, the inputs required, are all getting more expensive. The reason it may feel like fresh farmers’ market produce costs more is that small farmers are more likely to absorb those changes in input costs instead of passing them on to consumers. Grocery stores, with the food volumes they deal in, have the privilege of splitting those costs into frequent small price increases that go largely unnoticed; small retailers are more likely to either eat the change or employ one large price hike when margins shrink too far.
Concluding Remarks
Recent political events have caused Canadians to focus more attention on where food comes from. In response, the industry is renewing its value in national agricultural efficiency, building processing capacity, and supply chain networks. I am not the person to start telling you where you should and should not buy your groceries. If you value the connection to your food that direct farmer interaction gives, then local outlets may benefit you. If farmers’ markets don’t fit your lifestyle or you’re craving a European-mastered product like chocolate, then there is nothing wrong with sourcing from (globalized) grocery stores. Yes, prioritise Canada where you can, but we can’t grow bananas. If you’re unhappy with the availability of local or Canadian products at your grocery chain when you know they exist, it doesn’t hurt to ask your retailers why. Showing retailers there is demand is one of the best ways to improve accessibility or, at least, jumpstart resourcing considerations.
To ensure choice and Canadian economic benefits remain domestic, (local) markets can and should be complementary to larger supply chain disruptions. After all, sustainability leans more toward adequacy opposed to excessive production. Local and global supply chains don’t have to compete with each other since they fulfill adjacent consumer needs. A combination of complementary outlets can keep Canada’s food system resilient to global (political, climate) pressures and adaptable to changing sustainability needs. Sustainability demands a diversity of solutions to support our farmers, improve food security, and maintain confidence in Canadian agriculture, regardless of how far our food travels.
