Extreme weather events like fires, floods, heat waves and droughts pose an increasing risk to Canada’s food supply chain, putting pressure on prices all the way to the grocery store shelf, say experts.
“Anytime you have major weather-related events, it tends to increase costs,” said Frank Scali, vice-president of industry affairs at Food, Health & Consumer Products Of Canada.A 2019 federal government report said temperatures are projected to keep increasing, driven by human influence, while precipitation is also projected to increase.
According to a July report from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, the agriculture industry has faced a “cascade of challenges” recently, including climate change, with the ripple effects of these headwinds reverberating throughout the supply chain. The agriculture industry has been able to make itself somewhat more resilient to things like drought by changing some of its practices, said Tyler McCann, managing director at the agri-food policy institute, such as using a no-till technique to keep more moisture in the earth. Those practices can’t protect crops from the most extreme weather, he said, but they do help in other years.
Supply chains are generally designed to keep the lowest cost in mind, meaning the risk of disruption is higher, he said, such as having one large factory instead of multiple smaller ones, or being reliant on a single source for an important input. A disruption on one part of the supply chain can create a “domino effect,” he said.
Canadians may notice the effects of extreme weather events on their food in two ways: when prices go up, and when items are suddenly no longer available.
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