Canada’s National Food Security Strategy Leaves Farmers Hungry for Real Solutions
The National Food Security Strategy Identifies the Problems but Misses the Solutions
Canadians have an appetite for safe, healthy, affordable food produced by Canadian farmers and workers.
To advance domestic food production, the Government of Canada’s National Food Security Strategy (NFSS) promises to curb corporate concentration and reduce the country’s reliance on global markets with a $3.2 billion 10-year investment.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) applauds the federal government’s recognition of the problem and their initial attempt to address it, but we find the strategy’s proposed solutions wanting. After its cuts to public agricultural research and its undermining of food safety regulations, $3 billion over 10 years is an inadequate commitment to something as important as strengthening our domestic food supply. We are also skeptical that funding to stimulate grocery store competition, reduce provincial trade barriers, and advance AI and technological innovation will actually increase domestic production, ensure farmers’ economic dignity, or reduce food costs for Canadians.
The NFU encourages the federal government to create a more fulfilling food security strategy that ensures “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
Canadians are outraged that grocery prices continue to rise even after resolution of the COVID-19 supply chain disruptions. The NFU’s Fair Food Prices? Report (2026) found that consumers in 2025 spent almost 30 percent more for their groceries than they did in 2020. The farmers’ share of their food dollar hasn’t budged, while the grocery oligarchs have more than doubled their retail profit during that same period.
“The NFSS finally offers recognition of the damage that corporate concentration and global markets do to our food system — this opens the door to policy change that addresses the structures, rather than the symptoms, of a food system that only works for the few,” says Jenn Pfenning, NFU President.
While the federal government admits corporate power affects food security, its framing reduces the problem to issues of supply and demand. Their analysis suggests it is supply chain vulnerability that undermines food security, rather than the decisions of oligopolies to use their market power to raise prices to satisfy shareholders. Likewise, while the NFSS focuses on domestic food security, it makes numerous references to maintaining global competitiveness, which depends on keeping commodity prices paid to farmers low to support high profits for international agri-food traders.
“The National Food Security Strategy artfully deflects the gravity of the issue. If the federal government is serious about change, it should be confident in naming corporate power as the principal cause of inequity in our food system,” says Phil Mount, VP of Policy for the NFU. “The government’s refusal to engage with corporate power weakens the solutions contained in the Strategy.”
Over $1 billion of the NFSS expenditures is allocated to technological innovation and modernization that will encourage the food sector to implement artificial intelligence tools and other capital-intensive technologies that will erode the dignity of farmworkers, leave smaller, domestic-market producers behind, and hand over more power and money to large data firms and machinery companies. Notably, there is money to support highly corporately concentrated and energy intensive greenhouse and vertical farm operations, but little to nothing for ecological farmers who are growing local food sustainably.
“It is vital that the federal government support diverse farming models through distributed systems, keeping regional food hubs community-controlled, and preserving farmers’ rights to save, exchange, or develop seed,” says Josh Suppan, President of NFU-Ontario. “Support for diverse farms is notably absent in the National Food Security Strategy.”
The federal government expects farmers and Canadians to swallow the idea that deregulation, competition, and technological investment will lead to lower food prices and increased profitability for farmers. In conjunction with Bill C-30, the NFSS will accelerate pesticide approvals, increasing health and environmental risks for farmers, communities, and consumers.
“Canada must not compromise environmental and human health — that is the opposite of protecting Canadians,” says Alexis Légère, President of NFU-New Brunswick. “A successful, long-term food sovereignty strategy does not remove public interest safeguards, transparency, and research capacity to achieve economic growth.”
The NFSS identifies corporate concentration as a problem threatening Canadian food security, but comes up short with meaningful solutions. What the public really deserves is a food sovereignty policy that supports the development of community-scale, regional food systems and fair prices to farmers for the commodities they produce for both domestic and export markets. Canada’s future food sovereignty must be built upon a foundation of community-controlled healthy and culturally appropriate food, ecologically sound production methods, resiliency, and equity for all.
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For more information:
- James Hannay, NFU Policy Analyst: hannay@nfu.ca
