Hello. Thank you to the members of the committee for having us here today.
My name is Ashley St Hilaire, and I'm the director of programs and government relations with Canadian Organic Growers. I am joined here today by my colleague, Jim Robbins, on behalf of the Organic Federation of Canada.
Canadian Organic Growers is a national charity and organic farming membership organization. We are very pleased to be here today to talk about the importance of this government's initiative to develop a national food policy for Canada. We'd also like to announce and remind the committee that it is Canada's National Organic Week, which is an annual countrywide celebration of organic food, fibre, and farming. We're in our seventh year.
It's a very fitting time of year to discuss a national food policy for Canada. As Canadian crops are in their final weeks of harvest and abundance appears all around us, we are reminded by our work today that too many Canadians live with food insecurity. At the national food policy summit, we were shocked to learn that food bank usage continues to rise across the country despite Canada being ranked eighth in the world for food affordability. We support the work of this government and of Food Secure Canada to lead the development of a national food policy that will address these issues head-on. Every Canadian deserves the right to access culturally appropriate and nutritious food so they may live with dignity.
We feel the priority areas within this policy are appropriate and should be equally weighted. Organic food and farming span all of these priority areas and enhance food security in Canada, because the core principle of organic agriculture is healthy soil.
Through organic management practices organic producers are enhancing the health of our agricultural soils all across the country, ensuring that these lands can produce food for future generations of Canadians. Healthy soils enhance yields and the quality of what is produced. When we don't look after our soils, we turn to inputs, which increase the cost of production for farmers and cut into their profitability, making it harder and harder to make a living growing food for Canadians and the world. Farm profitability and food security in Canada are inherently linked.
We also urge policy-makers to recognize that a balance must be struck between the productivity of our crops and environmental degradation. Achieving ambitious agricultural export goals of $75 billion by 2025 should not come at a cost to the environmental health of our agricultural lands, as this would only further exacerbate food insecurity in Canada.
Organics is an industry that has always championed this balance and continues to be an agricultural leader in sustainability. Consumers from all walks of life support our industry every day when they purchase organic products at the grocery store and at farmers' markets. Their desire to access sustainably and locally produced organic food should be backed by this policy and by a commitment from the government to permanently fund the Canadian organic standards.
I'd like to turn it over to Jim to speak to that point.