Structural weakness creating food cost inflation

[border_humper]

Canada’s Food Economy Has a Hole in the Middle — And We’re Paying for It

We treat food inflation like a storm that will pass. The truth is, it moved in years ago and we’ve been paying rent ever since.

open.substack.com

Canada’s Food Price Report 2026 projects food prices will rise by another 4% to 6% next year.

For the average family of four, that means spending roughly $17,571 on groceries in 2026 – close to $1,000 more than this year. Food is now 27% more expensive than it was just five years ago.

This latest forecast simply confirms what many Canadians already experience every time they walk into a grocery store: the squeeze is no longer cyclical. It is structural.

To understand where we are headed, we need to be clear about how we arrived here. A long-term review of seasonally adjusted Canadian CPI data, from 1993 to today, reveals a telling pattern. Food inflation did not begin to outpace general inflation during the pandemic, nor did it start with the global disruptions of the past four years.

The divergence – this gradual decoupling of food inflation from overall inflation – began earlier, under the Harper government, around 2008 to 2010.

That timing matters not because it points to any single domestic policy choice, but because it underscores how global the shift truly was. The late 2000s marked the first major global food commodity crisis of the modern era. Energy prices spiked, extreme weather events disrupted harvests, and supply chains strained under growing complexity.

Canada, deeply integrated into global agricultural markets and reliant on imported inputs for food manufacturing, was inevitably pulled into these forces. The decoupling that began then has persisted ever since, through governments of all political stripes – widening further over the last four years.

Today’s food price pressures reflect accumulated, longstanding structural weaknesses: chronic underinvestment in food processing capacity, high transportation and energy costs, labour scarcity across every segment of the agri-food sector, and a retail landscape in which a small number of players exert disproportionate influence.

Add to that climate volatility, geopolitical uncertainty and the fragility of global supply chains, and the outcome is sustained food inflation that no rebate, tax credit or political announcement can easily correct.
A critical insight comes from Michael Graydon, CEO of Food, Health and Consumer Products of Canada. He argues Canada does not suffer from a lack of productivity because its firms are unproductive; we suffer because our manufacturing ecosystem lacks depth.

And he’s right. Canada has world-class multinational plants operating at peak efficiency within their global networks. We also have thousands of small firms with talent, ingenuity and ambition. What we lack is a strong, scaled “middle” firms – large enough to invest in automation, advanced processing, AI and modernization.

View: https://x.com/foodprofessor/status/1997325034952528263?

 

[Nuremburger]

Yeah, right. Making excuses for an obvious and intentional weakening of the Canadian dollar to create a communist serf class dependant on government bug powder and Soylent Green via MAID for nutrition.

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

Serfs away!!!!!!!

To bad we didnt use the opportunity the Freedom Convoy presented to get rid of all the traitors in power like we should have

Next time maybe and there will be a next time as there is always tyranny that needs to be stopped by the good people on mass

Governments need to fear their people. Its the only way freedom remains free

 

[Hirudinea]

 

[WHlTE_W4LKER]

Dude should open that fist up.

 

[Trudeaus coke dealer]

The convoy wanted to remain peaceful. Unfortunately the sorts of people who get involved in politics have no conception of things like honor and respect. They only understand violence.

 

[Hirudinea]

@WHlTE_W4LKER

Don't tell me, tell the AI.