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

摘要

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.