I appreciate that. I think 1km Foods would be far more difficult, so I'll stick with 100.
Thank you for your invitation to provide testimony during your investigation into food inflation in Canada.
My name is Paul Sawtell. In 2008, my wife and I founded 100km Foods, an award-winning local food distribution company. Our business was created to bridge the gap between small and medium-sized farms in southern Ontario and restaurants, small independent retailers, institutions and now home cooks as well. We connect a regional network of over 130 Ontario farms and producers with over 500 customers in southern Ontario, ranging from restaurants and cafés to the 2019 NBA champions, the Toronto Raptors. The Toronto Maple Leafs should take note.
Our supplier network is a mix of farms and producers that vary in size, in the products they produce and in the production methods they employ. No one in our network, ourselves included, has been insulated from the challenges that are driving food inflation in Canada. All of us have been exposed to significant increases in the price of fuel, packaging and other inputs over the past two years. Farmers are feeling squeezed, as you have heard in other witness testimony.
In looking at our own data, our average price of vegetables rose by 8% in 2022 versus 2021, which was below the national average of 11%. This may be attributable in part to a shorter supply chain, which keeps the amplification of inflation along the supply chain as low as possible.
While we may be seeing early signs that current food inflation levels are declining, climate change is inextricably linked to future food inflation and food insecurity. This will put at significant risk the Food Policy for Canada's vision of the future of food, which states, “All people in Canada are able to access...[enough] safe, nutritious, and culturally diverse food. Canada's food system is resilient and innovative, sustains our environment and supports our economy.”
It should be noted that BIPOC Canadians continue to be impacted disproportionately. The City of Toronto reports that Black Torontonians are three and a half times more likely to be food insecure than their white counterparts. Food system solutions must be developed through an equity lens.
Climate change and the associated rises in temperatures, droughts, floods, heat waves and changes in rainfall patterns threaten to impact agriculture more than any other industry, and threaten to only increase food inflation and food insecurity globally. It is widely accepted that one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions are related to food and our food system. At the recent COP27 conference, world leaders acknowledged that the climate crisis cannot be solved without addressing the problems in our food system. However, while the production and distribution of food has contributed to climate change, we have an opportunity to implement food-based solutions that have far-reaching benefits to mitigate it, which will help Canada meet its Paris Agreement obligations and help stem future climate-related food inflation and food insecurity.
Regenerative agricultural practices have been shown to sequester atmospheric carbon in the soil, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization cites other holistic models, such as agroecology, to be key to a global transition in agriculture. There is also a growing body of evidence that regional food systems can increase food system resilience and self-reliance and provide place-based solutions to climate change. We must act now.
We offer the following two recommendations for your consideration.
First, to mitigate a future food inflation crisis we must make a transition to agricultural practices and regional food systems that provide solutions for food security and climate change. Federal programs like the sustainable agriculture strategy and the on-farm climate action fund should be fully and permanently funded to help farmers make the transition to better production practices and invest in regional food systems.
Second, nutritious and sustainable food must be affordable and accessible to all Canadians, and our right to food should be codified. Increases in social safety nets, such as a universal basic income, can be useful tools for achieving this goal.
Thank you very much. I look forward to the discussion.