Local food plays an increasing role in the diets of Canada’s largest provinces, but tension will continue between local producers and major retail chains, says a new report.
Jessica Edge argues in a Conference Board of Canada report that Canadians have a “growing appetite” for local food.
Twenty-nine percent of produce grown in Quebec is consumed in the province while the percentage is 24 percent in Ontario and almost 16 percent in British Columbia.
However, Edge wrote that local food producers complain they cannot get shelf space in local chain grocery stores or watch their produce shipped hundreds of kilometres to a company warehouse only to be shipped back
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“The food service industry could well increase its use of local food in future, (but) there are significant barriers including the burden of increased time, manpower and cost,” she wrote.
Most “local food” is sold by larger stores, but it does not always lend itself to the food store chain model.
“Local food creates challenges for parts of the food industry that rely on significant volumes of product and compete largely on price,” she wrote.
“In particular, firms that rely on economies of scale to be competitive — such as commodity-based agriculture, most food processing and large retail chains — do not fit well into local food systems.”
While promotion of local food can be a boon for store profits and market image, the small local model does not always work, the report said.
“Large retail chains typically have one distribution centre for each region,” it said.
“Large retails have consolidated their buying practices to make distribution easier, streamline bookkeeping and reduce food safety and traceability issues.”
Edge said many producers feed into the local food market by remaining smaller and selling through local farmers markets or stores.
However, local producers who want to get into the broader food system should consider changing their marketing model.
“To supply large retailers, smaller producers may need to collectively organize themselves to achieve the necessary scale and simplify procurement,” she wrote, citing the example of the British Columbia Tree Fruits co-op that represents 580 Okanagan growers.
“A co-operative arrangement allows Loblaw to purchase fruit from all 580 growers using a single purchase order, giving the company a large volume of product with a simple procurement process.”
The conference board report is part of the buildup by the Ottawa-based business and government-supported research organization to a launch next spring of its proposed national food strategy.
An earlier report argued that local food has a questionable claim to being healthier or more environmentally friendly than food transported longer distances.
The latest report also noted that there is no consistent and generally accepted definition of local food.
Some consumers limit it to local farms within a drive, others a province or others to food produced within 100 miles.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency defines local food as “food produced in the province in which it is sold or food sold across provincial borders within 50 kilometres of the originating province.”
The conference board decided to define local as “food consumed as close to where it is produced and processed as is reasonably possible, taking into account regional differences in seasonality and availability.”
