A policy research centre will soon unveil an ambitious project to study how agriculture can help improve Canadians’ health and reduce health care costs.
The three-year-old federally funded Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute will announce by mid-February plans to study and document the ways that traditional and new agricultural and food products contribute to health, said CAPI president Gaetan Lussier, a Quebec consultant and former Agriculture Canada deputy minister.
“I think the agriculture economy will be tough for years to come,” he said. “I think our project will show Canadians and the industry how agriculture can get more and more involved in reducing the health deficit in Canada.”
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He said the research will consider agriculture as part of a broader society and not a separate and isolated sector known only for producing food and often facing economic problems.
“This will not by itself resolve the profitability of the sector, but we will explore new possibilities and new opportunities that will help,” he said.
CAPI recently received a boost from the Conservative government when agriculture minister Chuck Strahl announced the government is making a $15 million contribution to the institute, which is housed at the Experimental Farm near Agriculture Canada headquarters in a departmental building.
Strahl said the institute will be able to withdraw up to $1 million a year from the fund, plus interest. Despite its ties to Ottawa and some provincial governments, he described CAPI as “an independent, national, not-for-profit organization operating at arm’s length from government to provide a neutral venue for input into agricultural policy making.”
Lussier said at least as much money will have to be raised from members, the private sector and others to create an annual research budget of at least $2 million.
He said the government’s 15-year commitment will provide CAPI stability and allow it to leverage more money from other sources.
Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter, part of the Liberal government that created CAPI in 2004, said stable funding is important.
“It makes them more stable and it needed to be done.”
However, he also warned that the institute has to become more focused on farm profitability interests.
Easter, who publicly voiced unhappiness with CAPI after it provided background analysis for his study into low farm incomes in 2004, said CAPI must become more balanced.
“I think it has to become more balanced, less biased to the so-called value chain and agri-business and more attentive to the real problems on the farm,” Easter said.
