Food security and Canada's agricultural system challenged by COVID-19: One year later

Abstract

This paper assesses the earlier projections made by the authors in March 2020 about the impact of COVID-19 on Canada's food security. First, as measured in the early part of the second quarter of 2020, COVID-19 is associated with an increased prevalence of household food insecurity as measured by Statistics Canada. Also, as we predicted, we did not observe a rapid general increase in food prices that would have suggested a breakdown in parts of the food system. In this regard, we now develop a general insight that we believe is worthy of ongoing consideration. Put simply, concerns expressed about food insecurity should not be seen as tantamount to a failure of our food supply system. Household income, for example, is an important part of the story. The converse is also true: the success of our food supply system as measured by its capacity to adapt to challenges like COVID-19 or provide a variety of food at relatively low prices—while necessary, and (in our opinion) critical considerations—will not alone eliminate food insecurity in Canada. The oversimplified conflation of food insecurity concerns with the robustness of our food supply system does a disservice to ongoing efforts to address food insecurity as well as our capacity to assess and improve the Canadian food supply system.