Want to Make Food Affordable? Tackle Food Waste

This summer, the government of Canada rolled out its much-awaited National Food Security Strategy — a plan to make food more affordable, reduce Canada’s dependence on imports and impact from external shocks, and get more Canadian products onto Canadian shelves.

The strategy aims to help farmers earn more, families afford more and small businesses compete. These are good goals, as farmers are dealing with record costs, supply chain uncertainty and razor-thin margins. Families feel financial pain every time they pass through a checkout line, and small and independent grocers can barely compete in a market heavily skewed toward the largest players. A national plan that starts with these realities and invests billions into food infrastructure is most welcome.

But Canada’s food security strategy misses out on one of its biggest opportunities: food waste.

Canadians waste an astonishing amount of food — estimates range from more than a third to nearly half of all food produced. This waste drains up to $58 billion from Canada’s economy each year, and it’s so ubiquitous across farms, warehouses, transport, grocery aisles and kitchens (both domestic and commercial) that most people barely notice it. It’s like a bad smell we’ve all stopped noticing.

And yet it is there, at every stage of the food system, undermining every goal the strategy aims to achieve.

Food waste means farmers lose the value of what they produce. It means processors, distributors and retailers carry the burden of inefficiency. It means fewer meals for fewer people and families everywhere paying more for the food they need.

For a plan meant to address food insecurity at a structural level, leaving out one of the system’s clearest and costliest weaknesses is a serious gap. The good news is that bringing food waste prevention into the plan would not alter its direction — in fact, it would only strengthen the course it has already set.

Indeed, Canada has made an international commitment to fighting food waste. In 2015, it signed on to the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which called for halving per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reducing food losses across production and supply chains by 2030.

Measuring and reducing food waste will also help Canada meet its climate goals, as wasting less means fewer emissions across the entire supply chain, including the methane produced when food decomposes in landfills.

If we want to lower prices, strengthen domestic supply and provide better access to fresh food, we ought to pay closer attention to the food we produce but never use. Ottawa is right to talk about competition, import dependence and domestic processing. But a serious food security strategy should also ask: How can Canadians use more of the food we already have?

Other countries have shown what’s possible when governments treat food waste as a priority. Japan built a national framework around measurement and targets. France required large retailers to donate edible surplus food rather than destroy it.