Have you ever looked in your fridge and wondered where your food comes from? Food production is often based on aesthetics, time production and profitability rates, with production often being fast-paced, using pesticides and plant growth hormones. Food is fundamental to a sustained life, but when was the last time we questioned what goes into our bodies?
Canada imports $65 billion worth of food annually, with our main suppliers being the U.S. and Mexico, making Canada frequently reliant on other countries for our demand for fruits and vegetables. The Canadian climate is not suitable for growing the variety of fruits you find in local grocery stores. Despite this heavy reliance on food imports, Canada is still dependent on local farmers to produce much of its domestic food supply. The Canadian farming sector provides jobs for 2.1 million people, but job security is conditional on the ability to yield crops.
The ability to secure profit is linked with climate, absence of natural disasters and crop yields. These uncertainties can pressure farmers to use pesticides and growth hormones to be able to protect their harvest and maintain production.
The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) was established in 1935, being the biggest buyer and seller of Canadian wheat, regulating the market for smaller farmers due to growing anxiety around unfair pricing by large grain corporations. Until 2012, the CWB was backed by the government, having clauses that if crops were to fail, there were pool programs and extensive protection programs in place. These same protection programs no longer exist to the same extent, with the government instead offering suggestions to prevent crop failure, such as using pesticides, how to manage drought and how to adapt to dryland cropping systems.
These suggestions from the Canadian government are only temporary solutions to longer-lasting problems. Pesticides are among the most widely used chemicals in the world, with Canada having one of the least stringent regulations among industrialized countries, despite the potential risks and impacts on food and health of Canadian citizens. To feed into sustainable food production, we must terminate the registration of pesticide products where the primary active agent has been banned in at least one complying OECD nation due to health and environmental concerns.
In the U.S. this summer, there is a foodborne virus going around stemming from a parasitic infection known as cyclosporiasis, with over 8,000 confirmed cases. The infection has been connected to the purchasing of iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms, a multi-billion-dollar organization, but the FDA has since stepped back and said the Taylor Farms test for cyclospora was a false positive. No matter the source, this health emergency likely resulted from neglect of responsibility. If the companies that are supposed to protect their consumers are failing to properly test their produce before shipping out, how can we even trust the food in our grocery stores?
We need OECD-regulated products and we need to be protecting our smaller-scale farmers who aren’t billion-dollar industries but families who rely on revenue to support themselves.
Smallholder farms are the key to sustainable agriculture. Yielding higher biodiversity with varied crops and ecological land management with limited insecticides, small-scale farming is the future of tomorrow. Ask yourself, where does your food come from before you use it to fuel your body?
