Fair Food Prices? Fair For Who?
New report from the National Farmers Union shows the decline of farmers’ share of food prices while grocery oligarchs profit
In 2026, Canadian consumers are paying almost 30 percent more for their food than in 2020, while farmers have experienced stagnating prices for their products over the same time frame.
Fair Food Prices? presents price data for 14 farm products and their retail equivalents for the last twenty to fifty years. Retail prices for consumers have increased while the prices farmers have received for their products have hardly budged.
“This report highlights a growing disconnect between rising retail prices and stagnant returns at the farmgate. For BC tree fruit farmers, that gap is critical. Our costs continue to climb, but our share of the retail dollar does not. If that trend continues, it directly threatens the viability of family farms and the stability of Canada’s food supply,” says Adrian Arts, Executive Director of the British Columbia Fruit Growers Association (BCFGA).
While reporting and opinion pieces trying to explain food price inflation in Canada have deemed the causes “complex” and many, the National Farmers Union’s report shows otherwise. Four companies control 80% of Canada’s grocery sales, four companies account for 88% of Canada’s grain handling capacity, and two companies dominate Canada’s meat processing.
Canada’s agri-food oligarchs – the handful of corporations that have power to distort prices and markets – are the primary reason for the widening gap between the farmers’ earnings and the grocery sticker price.
Last year alone the grocery oligarchs raked in over $6 billion in profits, an astounding 200 percent increase over their average net profit of $2 billion/year between 2015-2019.
Just as this report has found retail grocers used the COVID-19 pandemic to increase their profits, the NFU is concerned that, unless we adopt strong regulations to protect Canadians from corporate greed, the inflationary costs of the ongoing war in Iran will lead to further profiteering at the expense of both farmers and consumers.
“The Royal Commission of 1959 showed that the large grocery retailers in Canada already had enough power to take money directly out of farmers’ pockets,” said Phil Mount, Vice President of Policy of the National Farmers Union. “Our report shows that nearly 60 years later, the handful of grocery giants left in this country are so powerful that they can openly profiteer during a pandemic, taking money directly out of the pockets of both farmers and consumers, with no consequences.”
The decline in farmers’ share of retail grocery prices is also related to the farm income crisis. Falling real net farm income over the last twenty years has jeopardized not only individual farm businesses, but rural economies and the diversity of the Canadian agricultural system. We are losing more than three farms per day, farmland consolidation is making land access untenable for new and young farmers, and we are seeing a decline in sustainable mixed-farming businesses and on-farm biodiversity.
“This report lays bare the lived reality of farmers. Government policies and business advisors tell us to grow our businesses to be more competitive, while handing control over costs and the market to profiteering oligopolies which serve their shareholders’ dividends instead of a reliable and equitable food system,” says Jenn Pfenning, President of the National Farmers Union.
Both farmers and consumers face the immense power of the agri-food oligoplies in their everyday lives. Corporate power is the common enemy of Canadian farmers and consumers, and it is a time for all of us to come together to fight for meaningful, structural policy changes that will curb corporate greed.
“In order to fix a problem of this magnitude, we need to cooperate at a scale we haven’t attempted in recent history,” says Katie Sardinha, member of the BCFGA and NFU. “We need our politicians to unite across party lines and commit to fixing this problem beyond the four-year election cycle. We need Canadians to understand the nature of the problem so that they can mobilize along with us to build a better food system.”
Farmers and consumers must organize to compel the federal government to establish profit caps on the grocery oligarchs and to set up public grocery stores as non-profit competitors. We must also work together to protect and expand supply management and collective marketing institutions, as they help to ensure a fair return for farmers. We need to ally with food sector unions to expand worker power. Only when we come together to advance policy goals that put producers, people, and the planet above profits will we achieve a just and sustainable food system in Canada.
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Click here to read the report: Fair Food Prices? The Declining Farmers’ Share and Food Inflation.
Click here to become a member of the National Farmers Union.
For more information, please contact:
James Hannay, NFU Policy Analyst: hannay@nfu.ca
