By Dr. Evan Fraser, executive director of the Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph; Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute, University of Fraser Valley; and Alison Sunstrum, managing partner at the VC fund, NYA Ventures.
This article is an expanded version of a commentary that first appeared in the Toronto Star. The original version is available here.
The world is rediscovering something we have too long taken for granted: food is power. In a matter of days, war in the Middle East has raised fertilizer prices 50 per cent on the markets, causing disaster for farmers worldwide. With price inflation certain to pick up again, a rise in food insecurity is inevitable. And the cost of fuel, critical to the entire food chain, is soaring. In this era of global fragmentation and fragile supply chains, countries that can reliably produce and deliver food are not simply exporters; they are also strategic actors.
For Canada, with its abundant natural resources and global reputation for producing safe, high-quality food, agriculture is a central pillar of domestic stability — and a critical element of national security. If we position ourselves as a reliable food partner to our closest allies, we can help build a new, more resilient international order.
What Canada should do: A strategic food system
Three priorities must guide Canadian policy if we want to become a reliable agri-food partner in an uncertain world.
First, we need to treat the critical infrastructure necessary for food production, processing and transportation as key to our national security. Canada’s biggest vulnerability is the broken middle of the system: processing, storage, logistics, cold-chain capacity and agricultural data systems. Governments should treat midstream agricultural assets the same way they treat ports and power grids, offering credit guarantees, concessional financing and long-term capital structures. We cannot achieve food resilience if we cannot process, move and finance the food we grow.
Second, we need to adapt our agri-food system to a world of fractured trade relationships. Canada must diversify export corridors, increase port and rail capacity, create secure supply chains and align with trusted allies’ industry standards. When reliability becomes part of our brand, coercion becomes more difficult, and friendships deepen.
Third, we need to recognize that government cannot bolster Canada’s food resilience on its own. It must incentivize actors across the system to pitch in. This includes modernizing the capital and tax architecture around agricultural and food infrastructure in Canada: unlocking investment in automation, storage and cold-chain buildouts; and creating financing structures that reward adoption and commercialization — not just research.
Deglobalization and Canada’s strategic moment
The era of free and easy global trade is ending.
Since the 1990s, globalization lulled nations into complacency, assuming supply chains would function smoothly. This era rewarded efficiency and eliminated redundancies. But it was also built on systems that largely originated in — or ran through — one country: the United States.
Modern geopolitical competition rarely begins with military confrontation. It begins with economic coercion, supply chain disruptions and the strategic manipulation of dependencies. Food sits squarely within this new terrain. As our prime minister said in Davos: “A country that cannot feed itself…has few options.” Canada’s agri-food sector can not only help us control our own destiny — we can export this resilience to key partners.
Canada needs to recognize that the capacity to produce food is not simply an economic driver, but a strategic lever. Unfortunately, we still approach agriculture policy through a twentieth-century lens: fragmented innovation programs, endless small pilot projects and underbuilt processing capacity. And our thin transportation infrastructure assumes frictionless trade and no environmental disruptions along the scant single-track rail lines linking the prairies to Vancouver, the Port of Churchill and the East.
Canada lacks a strong strategic awareness that we are one of the few nations on Earth capable of being a reliable agricultural superpower.
Cooperation and competition
A modern food strategy must recognize two truths simultaneously. Countries should collaborate on foundations: standards, regulatory clarity, traceability and infrastructure. But we must compete on performance: technology adoption, productivity and the ability to attract capital. Canada has the potential to win on the latter — but only if we collaborate on the former.
Taken together, our farms, processing facilities, agri-food entrepreneurs and transportation infrastructure are strategic resources vital to Canada’s domestic resilience and position on the world’s stage. Food systems are national-security systems in our age of deglobalization.
If we can modernize ours, it will lead to a more prosperous Canada — and contribute to creating a more prosperous world.