Ideas - Food Security: Root Causes and Pathways to Change

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

The cost of food is rising, and more Canadians are having difficulty knowing if they can afford their next meal. IDEAS hears from four leading experts in the field of food insecurity to explore the root causes and how our food systems can evolve to support us all. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 29, 2023.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed.

With inflation and the cost of food on the rise, more and more Canadians are having a hard time knowing if they can afford their next meal. What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? And what is that next meal going to be like? In the month of March 2023 alone, nearly 2 million Canadians had to make use of a food bank. There is a sense of desperation here, a common story at food banks across the country.

A new poll by Food Banks Canada found about a quarter of Canadians say they're eating less than they should because that's all they can afford. And the question of food security around the world is equally worrying. A new report from the United Nations says more than 258 million people faced food insecurity last year. A staggering jump there. The Secretary General of the UN says, quote, we're moving in the wrong direction, pointing to the fact that this is the fourth consecutive year that those rates have increased. Now, when I give talks on global food security, which is quite often, I usually start with a shopping list of things that are going wrong. Evan Fraser is the director of the Arrow Food Institute at the University of Guelph. He was recently appointed to the United Nations High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition. Agriculture is contributing about a third

of the world's climate change emissions. A third of the world's food is wasted at some point on its journey from farm to fork. We have enough food, but it's poorly distributed. As a result, we live in that world of stuffed and starved, where both the number of hungry people and the number of people struggling with chronic illnesses linked to diet are both rising. That's another true depressing fact. Another one that I particularly quote like, if we all wanted to adopt the Canadian healthy eating food guide, we would have to quadruple the production of fruits and vegetables. In other words, if we all ate the Canadian food guide and sort of imagined it all being produced at the same time, we'd run out of fruits and vegetables in this country and globally by around March. And then we'd be eating starches and sugars and fats for the rest of the year. But that's a describing the problem kind of talk.

And we're going to not try to describe the problem today. We're going to try to move beyond the problem and talk about the solution, the pathways to change. The pathways to change. Evan Fraser invited me to moderate a panel with four leading minds in the area of food security, each with a unique approach to addressing the problem and solutions. The event was recorded at the Toronto Region Board of Trade in November 2023 as part of the Arrow Food Summit. We invited each panelist to begin with a short statement. First up, Paul Taylor. He's the former executive director of FoodShare Toronto and is now an independent consultant. I want to start with acknowledging that,

you know, my interest and initial orientation to the issue of food insecurity is a personal one. I was raised by a single mom who was forced to work multiple low-wage jobs at the same time until she couldn't anymore. So for the bulk of my childhood, we relied on welfare. As a child, I remember leaving the school grounds as soon as I was old enough on my own so that I could go on solo walks at lunch. And I did that to hide the fact that I was without food. Like many kids, I was embarrassed, it was painful and an isolating experience. I'll never forget, anyone tells you that food is not political,

they're wrong, because I will never forget when Mike Harris was elected Premier of Ontario, I was 13, and it was the first election that I really paid attention to. He talked about this thing, I had no idea what it was at the time, called a common sense revolution. I wasn't sure what it meant, but I would certainly later find out. One of his first actions, some of you will recall this, one of his first actions as premier was to cut welfare by 22 percent. 22 percent. It didn't make sense to me that he wanted to make life harder for my family. It didn't make sense to me that he wanted us to have less food to eat.

It didn't make sense to me that he didn't to have less food to eat. It didn't make sense to me that he didn't want us to have heat, hot water, or electricity. That is until it all made sense to me several years later. I've come to realize that food insecurity is often caused by those types of cruel political decisions. I've come to realize that the pain, the stress, and the shame that were bestowed upon my family and many others didn't have to be that way. It was a political choice. Food insecurity has been rising in this country for a long time since then, and the hardest part is that many of us don't see the connection to the choices our political leaders make. I think that our collective lack of understanding of food insecurity is one of

the greatest barriers to effectively addressing it. We're taught that the best way to respond to food insecurity in our communities is to collect our leftover and unwanted food and donate it to a food bank. Schools across the country hold food drives so that kids can be taught an important lesson. But I think the lesson that we're really taught is that food insecurity is a community issue, it's an issue of charity, and it can be solved through the kindness of others. We're taught that the solution lies in food bank drives as well as community gardens, our connecting to growing community kitchens, cooking classes, cooking classes for poor people, or even worse, redirecting corporate food waste and directing it into the bellies of low-income people, like they're some sort of walking compost bin. I understand the good intentions, but this does a huge disservice to those made to experience

food insecurity. There isn't one single data point that suggests that any of those activities, while they might make us feel good, none of them have proven to have an impact on rates of food insecurity at all. But yet we continue along the same path year after year. And while we continue to do this, the rate of food insecurity in Canada is higher than it's ever been. Charity is not a solution to food insecurity. And we need to stop.

One of the key things that we need to stop doing is framing food insecurity as hunger. Hunger and food insecurity are not one in the same and shouldn't be used interchangeably. Hunger is something that is experienced at the individual level and may or may not be caused by food insecurity. Someone could be hungry because we forgot lunch on the counter at home or because we just ordered a meal and it hasn't arrived yet. That's not food insecurity. Food insecurity is measured at the household level by Statistics Canada. It actually has less to do with food than it does money. It's about families not having enough money to access the food that they need.

Not understanding this key distinction is really important because I think it allows food insecurity to be framed as hunger and is what causes many of us to think that food banks is an effective response to this issue or food-based charity. And our politicians reinforce this idea with their photo ops, volunteering, sorting tins at food banks. They have allowed charity to become Canada's default response to a public policy issue. A public policy issue that will never be solved with day-old Starbucks muffins, a school drive, or your family's unwanted tins of cranberry sauce. We desperately need our politicians to put down the tins and start sorting policy, and in particular policies aimed at protecting families navigating food insecurity. Food insecurity is an absolute crisis in this country.

There are six in 2022, 6.9 million people experience food insecurity, yet our politicians refuse to reach for the levers available to them. While food banks across the country are seeing an unprecedented number of visits, many say that they've either run out of food or they're at risk of running out of food. They are just as worried now as the people who show up at their doors for help. Going back to the data, you know, when we look at the data on food insecurity across Canada, there's an interesting anomaly. Quebec has the lowest percentage of people living in food-insecure households across the country.

Quebec, among other things, is indexing their social entitlements, like welfare and disability income supports, to inflation. They've also been leaders, we all know this, at introducing progressive social and economic policies for a long time. Quebec recognizes the role that public policy can play on protecting those that have been made to struggle the most. Whether they intended this or not, the situation in Quebec adds to a strong body of evidence that proves that food insecurity can and should be reduced through policy interventions. I also don't think we need

to waste time and resources with another basic income pilot to prove this. We already know the transformative potential that something like a basic income can have on food insecurity across this country. We already have this data, in fact, but our politicians never speak about it, and unfortunately, come the holiday season, neither does the mainstream media in this country. My last example on this potential for public policy to address food insecurity is centered on the experience of low-income older adults. The data on food insecurity shows us that the prevalence of food insecurity drops substantially as soon as low-income older adults reach retirement age. It's a drop in food security of almost 50%.

50%. That's huge. And this happens because seniors actually have access to a form of basic income in this country by way of the old age security program, the guaranteed income supplement, and any other income from pensions that they've contributed to. The drop in rates of food security is both sizable and undeniable. Unfortunately, 6.9 million Canadians forced to endure food insecurity can't wait until they're 65 for an escape from food insecurity. They need action now. Reducing household food insecurity requires the commitment of public revenue, policies and resources to ensure that incomes are adequate, secure and responsive to the changing costs of living.

We need honest conversations about the root causes of food insecurity in this country. We need honest conversations about the root causes of food insecurity in this country. And we need politicians brave and ambitious enough to put food insecurity where it belongs once and for all in our country's history books. Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul, for such a thoughtful opening salvo. A couple of quick questions for you before we move on to Inbal. Very arresting, your line about asking policymakers to stop sorting the tins and to start sorting the policy. The fact is, though, that in the month of March 2023 alone, nearly two million Canadians made use of a food bank. How do you walk that back? How do you undo such a, what has become a serious dependency on you, as you say, as a charity? It doesn't seem

like an easy thing to do very quickly. It certainly isn't an easy thing to do. And many of us have no recollection to a time before food banks existed. The first food bank in this country opened in 1981. Before that, food banks weren't a part of people's journey to access the food that they need. So I think we need to go back to that time. And back then, we actually looked at income-based interventions to respond to these sorts of issues, much more like Europe at the time. And instead, there was this big shift,

this big shift where there was no political debate, no political discussion, no public discourse, where we've moved to food-based interventions. So I think there absolutely are policies. There are absolutely, you know, things like income, things like a basic income are the types of policies that we could look to immediately to significantly reduce dependency on food banks and food insecurity overall. We see it happening already every day when it comes to seniors. Can you give us, for those of us who don't follow it every day,

where the discussion is currently on basic income in this country? That's a really good question. Where the discussion is on basic income, it seems to be a discussion. Some people say that there's a policy window around basic income. I'm critical of the idea of policy windows. I think basic income is an important intervention, is an important tool that will help us address food insecurity, but it is a go-forward intervention.

So when I think about, you know, further to Evan's point earlier around who's at the table, who's informing these sorts of conversations or policy windows, to me it's really clear that white supremacy is having a significant impact on identifying something like basic income as a policy window because it does nothing to address the generations of inequity, harm, violence that racialized, particularly Black and Indigenous communities, have been forced to endure. So I think we need to have a much more nuanced conversation about basic income that includes restitution by way of things like reparations. Paul Taylor is the former director of FoodShare Toronto, Canada's largest community food organization.

He's now an independent consultant. From the local and political to the realm of high-tech satellite imaging. The NASA Harvest Program was established in 2017 to make satellite imaging of cropland around the world available to both public and private organizations. The idea is that the more information governments and farmers can access, the better they can plan and adapt to the ebb and flow of food production. Inbal Becker-Reshef is director of the NASA Harvest Program and professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland. I work a lot with satellite information,

and I think some of what ties, I think, all of us in some senses in a message around data and data that's actionable, that we can understand better where the interventions are working, how do we improve interventions. And I think as we've heard, food insecurity is growing significantly and fast. Unfortunately, we're only getting further and further away from the sustainable development goal of zero hunger. There are many causes that are complex and very much regional and across the world. But we do know that poverty, we do know that wars and armed conflicts and a changing climate with more extreme weather events are large drivers of

that. And I think to address these challenges, we need to have data and we need to have data that's transparent, that's actionable, that's timely, that's in the hands of the right people that we can understand and we can help also translate data into these kinds of information. And so at NASA Harvest, we're very much focused on the satellite part of that information and technological advances within that, that can provide information that's timely, that's transparent, that's global and local, that can ultimately help to inform decisions, whether those are farmer decisions of what and when to plant, when to sell, to government policies and investments, whether those are social safety net programs,

to humanitarian decisions. And we often lack that data. We lack information, very basic information than one might think we have. Like where are all the global croplands of the world? Where are specific crops being grown and when? How much has been harvested? What's our production, right? There's a lot of information we have and a lot of information that's still missing. And in particular, when you start to think about smallholder systems in countries. And so what I would like to do is talk perhaps about an example of some of the work that we've been doing on helping to provide some more transparency. And one of those is around the war in Ukraine. And many of you will be aware that Ukraine is a big world producer of food, very

important for international global markets. Before the war, it was the fifth largest wheat exporter in the world, accounting for around 11% of the world's wheat trade. It's the number one sunflower oil exporter, accounting for about 50% of global sunflower exports. I think once the war occurred, many of you might have noticed the large jump in prices in particular of these commodities. And it's the third largest rapeseed exporter, what you call in Canada, canola. So in other words, the food that's produced in Ukraine is critical for global trade and for feeding many people around the world, as well as for, of course, for its own population. But once the war broke out, it was much harder to collect information around what was the impact of the war broke out, it was much harder to collect information

around what was the impact of the war, how much of Ukraine's cropland was being occupied by Russia, what was going to be the impact, how much of the wheat that is, it's a winter wheat primarily, so it was planted before the war started, how much of that would be able to be harvested, how much of the spring crops that are largely corn and sunflower could actually be planted. And so there were a lot of different rumors around and a lot of speculation that anywhere

between 30 and 50 percent wouldn't be harvested, wouldn't be planted. And we were approached by the government of Ukraine, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, to support them using satellite data because in this case satellite data was actually the only way to be able to rapidly assess what was happening, and in particular, in the Russian-occupied territories. And so what we were able to do is, first of all, right when the war started, to assess that around 22% of Ukraine's total croplands were under Russian occupation. And in fact, what we found was quite surprising. While most people expected a very significant shortfall of food production out of Ukraine, we saw that production was actually much higher. They harvested around close to 90% of everything that had been planted.

The large areas that were not harvested were really around the front line of the war. But as we went into the occupied territories and into the Ukraine-controlled territories, that was all planted. And farmers are resilient. Farmers, if they can plant, they will plant. And that's very much what we saw. And so that information actually had a significant impact. For one, it helped to inform a decision on not putting an export ban. And many of you will know that when there are export bans, in particular in big production export countries, that has implications globally, and that will increase

prices internationally. And we also have continued to do this work, including this current season. And one of the things that we were able to assess is how much of Ukraine's land has been abandoned due to the war. We're seeing a tremendous amount of artillery and a lot of damage to some of the world's most productive agricultural land. And what we found was between 6.5 to 8.5 percent of Ukraine's total cropland was abandoned due to the war. And when we converted that to how much food was lost, could have been planted and harvested and wasn't, that accounted for, that could have fed close to 25 million people. So those are not small numbers. When we look at what was produced this

year alone in the Russian occupied territories, I can give you the number in millions of tons that might not resonate in terms of how much food that is, but it's around 22% of Canada's wheat production for this year. Or it's around close to 60% of the imports of Egypt. Egypt is the world's largest wheat importer, right? So we're talking about tremendous amounts of food, where today there is no agency actually that's providing information on the Russian occupied territory. So if you look at the numbers of what is Ukraine producing, they're right now the government-controlled territories, whether you're looking at the FAO on the UN side of things, or where you're looking at the Ukrainian government or

the US Department of Agriculture. And so that is really important to have that transparency, to have that kind of information. But this kind of information, I'm just trying to illustrate one example, is really important. This kind of information can help inform farmer decisions. If you're a farmer in Saskatchewan, for example, and trying to decide when should I sell my grain? Should I store it or should I sell? What should I plant? And this kind of information can become very important. It can become very important for informing decisions of governments on sustainable practices. Which ones work best where? How do we make better recommendations? Where are we going to have shortfalls and how do we start to provide that kind of information? So these types of

information, I think ultimately though, to be effective, and I think we start to provide that kind of information. So these types of information, I think ultimately though, to be effective, and I think we've heard this theme throughout and we'll continue to hear that, they have to be user driven. They have to be co-led. It can't be somebody sitting on the other side of the world saying, I know what's going to be valuable information for you. These have to be done in partnership. They have to be co-owned, co-developed, co-led, and have ways to transition these kinds of information ultimately into those end-user systems such that they're sustained into the future. And I see I'm out of time, so I'll stop there and a few more comments.

Perfect timing. Thank you very much. I have never, I'm nowhere near a subject matter expert on this, so forgive me for these questions, but how is it that that kind of data gets into the hands of a farmer in Saskatchewan? What's the access like? That's a very good question. So I think a lot of what we try to do in this sense is to provide information that's global and transparent. And so that if we have better information on markets, on what's happening in the big exporting countries, or in the most vulnerable countries. And so on our side, we have something called the crop monitor, but there's a lot of systems and information that are going out in place. And I know that different farmers actually

go and look at these kinds of information. And then, of course, you try also to work with different organizations that farmers are more tied into when you're starting to think more about practices and different decisions at the field or subfield level. But there's a lot of work going on in the satellite space in terms of different use cases for farmers to use. And the other thing I was curious about is what did actually, what was the impact on the rest of the world's producers of the information that you did uncover about Ukraine and what was going on there? What did, how did it affect the farmer in Saskatchewan or in India or somewhere else? For one, understanding that there was actually a lot of production, right?

So production was still reduced relative to the five-year average for Ukraine, but was actually pretty close to that. And so what that meant is that there wasn't an export ban. And then that means that the prices didn't skyrocket. And so having that understanding of that grain will come onto the market. In that case, the grain corridor was still operating. We know now that that's not, and Ukraine is working very hard to get still those grain exports out. But having knowledge of what's happening in global markets does actually influence decisions of a lot of farmers around the world of what they're going to plant, what's going to be most profitable, what's needed. If you look also at sometimes

farmers in the southern hemisphere, when you have asynchronous seasons, can be very informed around what's happening in the northern hemisphere and again, be able to then influence those kinds of decisions. Great. Thank you very much, Inbal. Inbal Becker-Rashef is Director of the NASA Harvest Program and Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland. You're listening to Ideas, where a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca

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I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. There is no question that food security, both locally and globally, is an urgent issue of our day. According to the International Monetary Fund, the number of people facing acute food insecurity around the world has doubled since 2019. And according to the World Health Organization, approximately 3 billion people on this planet cannot afford a healthy diet. Here in Canada, one in five people live in a food-insecure household, and food banks have never been busier. In just one month, March 2023,

nearly 2 million Canadians had to make use of a food bank. In November, the Arrow Food Institute, based at the University of Guelph, brought together four leading minds in the field of food security to talk through what they see as root causes and possible solutions to a more food-secure future. Jennifer Grants leads the Indigenous Ecology Lab at the University of British Columbia. So I'm going to start with a story. During my undergraduate degree at UBC, my husband and I lived into what was referred to then as married student housing. And it was one of the longest places that we ever lived. For five years, we

came and went from our tiny little apartment, and we got to know no one. We could recognize the couples that lived beside us and across from us, you know, perhaps exchanging the occasional nod as we unlocked our doors a few meters apart from each other, but we never knew them. And it's not because we aren't friendly people, I think. It's just that this is what our metropolitan society has become. You know, individualism, nuclear families, disconnection. And this experience came to mind as I was kind of struggling to figure out how to properly characterize what I see as the root causes of food insecurity for this panel today. as the root causes of food insecurity for this panel today. My lab at UBC, the Indigenous Ecologies Lab,

we work only in service to Indigenous communities on land healing initiatives where we apply a food systems lens to ecological restoration. And in all of these communities, as well as a number of the small and rural communities that they exist beside or within, I witnessed firsthand the existence and power of alternative food systems. And while I thought my focus today would be on how we need to transform how we see natural lands as food and give recognition to these traditional food systems like protein sources like deer and elk and moose and fruit sources, you know, like huckleberries and salmonberries, that they deserve, you know, like huckleberries and salmonberries that they deserve,

you know, they're critical and often overlooked contributors to food security, not just in indigenous communities, but rural ones as well. And the sharing and trading that accompanies them, you know, protein sources for plant foods. This is really a hidden part of our food system that functions outside of capitalism and outside of commodification. And really today, I wanted to point squarely at capitalism as the cause of food insecurity and the sharing economies of these communities, you know, that have purposely stewarded lands as a solution. But thinking more deeply about these systems and my experiences, both in these communities and like my experience at UBC, not knowing my neighbors, I realized that capitalism wasn't quite the problem. And alternative food systems, they're a symptom of a solution.

So this summer, as I worked battling invasive species on the shores of a northern or north coast indigenous community that I work alongside, I was watching as their fishing boats were coming in at the end of the day. And I watched the fish being brought immediately to the homes of elders and families with children first. And on my own family's small farm in Parksville, I grow and I preserve fruits and vegetables every chance I get. I can and dry everything. And this fall, my friends from the nation whose traditional territory that we live on brought us fish. And I packed up a huge box of all of our preserves, canned fruits, canned juices, vegetables, dried herbs, and berries. And these are alternative food systems that are rooted in reciprocity, with people and our lands and our waters and respect and sharing and caring for others to ensure that all are fed. And none of it can exist

without those strongly knit communities. And I realize, thinking back to our apartment at UBC, that the answer, you know, isn't entirely in government policies and solutions. In fact, it might be foolish for us to be relying on the hope of systemic change. I hate saying that, but people are suffering right now with food insecurity. And really, we are the answer. We have to take responsibility for creating these communities where they don't exist. Community in the truest sense, like I get to witness in the indigenous communities that I work with and the rural communities surrounding them as well most of us live in this metropolis and many of us while living among so many people find ourselves living entirely alone trying to do it all take

care of ourselves and to me we have to find a way to create community that ensures no one's left behind. But it's not solely about existing within an alternative food system, as great as that can be. It's about existing in a system of community care. And that then perhaps frees up resources for things like food. You know, realizing that not all of our food can come from our lands and waters. You know, care for children as an offset, you know, as an example. Sharing economies, like reciprocity that supports whole lives and setting the bar higher than coexistence. I was recently at a gathering on Haida Gwaii for indigenous food champions, and it was a gathering of mostly indigenous people from several different nations

working on indigenous food systems reclamation and revitalization. And it was to be a creation of a new community to support those of us doing this kind of work. And as part of that, we were asked to each bring something to share with the whole group. And on the final day, we would have this sharing table, and you would get to choose, you know, what you were, you know, something that you would like to take home. And if there's anything that I've learned about Indigenous communities is that we take gifting very seriously. We will not be outgifted. A Haida friend of mine was like, you'll never outgift a Haida. And I was like, you won't bet.

Right? And I left that event with my suitcase like way overweight. And like, God bless the Air Canada lady who kind of just pretended she didn't see and took my suitcase. But I left with this abundance of jam and honey and seeds and tubers. I got Haida potatoes and Shim Shan potatoes and dried plants for making medicines and art and books. And I was just overwhelmed by the abundance that comes from the creation of community. You know, so there's no one way we can fix food insecurity, you know, and as we recognize that, I think it's time for us to think about these social innovations, you know, in understanding

what communities need and working by their values and recognizing that there's opportunity for innovation at the local community level and where we can focus on collective well-being and build community-level resilience. Thank you very much, Jennifer. Thank you very much, Jennifer. Such intuitive and compelling ideas. And you've spoken previously about kind of this slow and reluctant inclusion of Indigenous ways of thinking, not just about reciprocity, but about, you know, restoration and these kinds of things. What's in the way of that? Is it a lack of,

is it persuasion or the unwillingness to be persuaded? Why are those ideas not being, you know, taken up by everyone? Well, I think that they are starting to, you know, I think there's just such a misunderstanding of who our communities are and that we're still here and that, you know, if you want adaptation experts, you really should come to us for the answers, right? You know, so I feel a lot of hope now, you know, there's more and more interest in our knowledges to, and our worldviews to inform or provide a grander picture, you know, because we should be further ahead than we are. And maybe it's just having more contributions by different worldviews and perspectives that are going to help complete the picture. So I think we're almost there.

Jennifer Grenz leads the Indigenous Ecology Lab at the University of British Columbia. And the final panelist is Patrick Webb. Patrick Webb directs USAID's Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab and teaches in the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. He spent much of his career examining food systems globally and worked at the United Nations World Food Program as Chief of Nutrition. In all my years of working on food insecurity with Indigenous or peoples around the world, the things that I come away with are uncertainty, pain, shame, fear. It's not just the hunger dimension. It's the things that wrap around hunger that make the experience of food insecurity so damaging at the individual, the household, community level. And we don't hear nearly

enough outrage of that dimension of food insecurity. The fact that people feel shamed that they can't put food for their babies, or they feel fear, literal fear, that they won't be able to put food on the table next week. There's a serious problem here, structural problem. You use the word food systems collapse. And that's what it comes down to. So what I'm putting on the table is that food insecurity is all the things that have been said so far, but I put it in this bigger picture of food systems collapse,

or put it on a positive sense, food systems transformation. The systems we rely on today were essentially designed in the 1940s to generate cheap calories for as many people, mainly urban consumers, as possible through maximizing, not optimizing, maximizing yields and productivity, maximizing use of inputs. We all know the positives that have arisen from that. Most of us know some of the negatives that have arisen from that. At the point today where we're relying on food banks, where our bread baskets are collapsing or at threat of collapse, and where indigenous people see food systems collapse, we have a problem. The system that was set up backwards 60, 70 years ago is not the system that we need going forward, 70 years from now.

We need to be thinking, we policymakers and everyone that leads to policy, need to be thinking about, well, what is it we want our food system to look like in 2060, 70, 80, and then work backwards to figure out what on earth is it going to need to get us there? Because if we don't, there's so much that's going wrong. And I don't want to focus on the negatives, but it is important that food diets are at the core of so many of humanity's current existential challenges, right? Diets are at the core of 800 million people going hungry every day. They're at the core of 3.2 billion people unable to afford a healthy diet every day. Diets are the outcome of the food systems that generate one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. And it's not just from agriculture, by the way, Evan. It's the whole food system. It's the transportation, the refrigeration, everything else that goes along with the food system as a whole. So climate change, so climate health, human health,

20% of all preventable disease relates to dietary, suboptimal diets. One in five people are dying through suboptimal diets. sub-optimal diets. Now, a lot of the child labor problems around the world in terms of exploitation of child labor happens in agriculture and food value change subsequently. So there's lots of things wrong with the many systems that generate the food on which we rely. with the many systems that generate the food on which we rely. The system isn't working. My brief personal note is a few years ago, my wife and family and I trekked up to Everest Base Camp,

not to the summit, just up to the base camp. That was hard enough. Jeez, that was hard enough. As you get higher and higher above the tree line, above 17 000 18 000 feet um the number of little tea rooms where you sleep at night if freezing to death this was in december not a good idea uh they thin out because there's there's fewer and far between but what you notice is that there are no roads. There are no vehicles up that high. Everything has to be carried in on the back of a Sherpa.

Every single thing. Toilet paper, pens, and food, right? And what we could see, every village we would walk through, you'd have the lovely gaggle of children coming out, beautiful children rushing out, and every single one of them had either a bag of chips or a bag of cookies, salted cookies, or a beverage. It doesn't matter which sugar-sweetened beverage it is. Every single one of them, that's what they were carrying. Now, I'm not bemoaning ultra-processed foods.

I'm not going to go into that. But the point is the system allows those products to reach the most remote parts of the world you can imagine. That's vertically. It's the same horizontally. But as Evan said, there are not enough fruits and veg produced globally to even meet minimum food-based dietary guidelines. So the system isn't fit for purpose. It has to change.

We have to think about what comes next. Where do we go in the future? And there are many ways to be positive about that future. And so we have to, we have to, this isn't a luxury, we have to change those systems. We have to go for transformation. And a year ago, the prime minister of Nepal was quoted as saying, and I quote, transforming our food systems is akin to building a new fortress against hunger and food insecurity, end quote. Right? Clearly stating we've got to do something big, and this is the way we will protect the

future against hunger and food insecurity. Now, there's going to be lots of actions required across lots of sectors, and there are, in fact, examples where countries, governments, we can talk about those, are beginning to take this more seriously than they ever have in the past. But we have to do this. Thank you very much, Patrick. What you're describing, reinventing a global food system, as you say, building a fortress, is another process that is long-term thinking what's required here. And as you know, as we discussed earlier, most governments are not naturals at doing this. How do you go about building that kind of interest and that long-term

process in governments that are so transient? Great question. And obviously, this is an issue of political economy. My answer would be, we found that it used to be, when I first started, I worked for the CGIR. And if the first place you'd go would be a prime minister or a president's office, you'd, you treat that as the policymaker at the highest level, you learn very, very quickly that, yes, things get written, get signed at that level, but the work gets done many layers below that. And actually cultivating long-term engagement with bureaucrats, right, the civil servants who are typically in place for much longer than politicians can serve well. And so it's bureaucrats, it's think tanks who advise

multiple governments year after year, and it's sub-national governance as well, which is often less, rotates perhaps less often than the national politics do. So thinking who will be there in the long run, who will benefit from a long perspective and going after them. Patrick Webb is director of USAID's Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab and a professor in the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Of course, we don't have enough time to get into every single one of your statements, but I'd like to try. And I think stating the obvious, we have to acknowledge that the answer to the problem of food security lies at the intersection of these and many other ideas out there. So that's the starting point. And with that in mind,

I wondered if I could go to each of you again, just with a short question, if you could pick one of the other panelists' proposals as a starting point. And this isn't really a debate, it's a conversation. Where would you begin, Paul? Where would you start? Good question. I guess I'm a little bit less willing to let capitalism and commodification off the hook. You know, I think in this country, we have been given this thing called a right to food, introduced in 1966, ratified 10 years later in 1976. It means that the government has a responsibility in this country to ensure that we all have access to the food that we need. So I think there's something there. I think a number of people have tried to, you know,

leverage the right to food or the commitments under the right to food to push for, you know, the kinds of interventions and the kinds of policies that we know will lead to people having access to the food that they need. So I think that that's one that certainly, I think, is really important. Sure. Jennifer, you had said that the answer lies with us. It's not with government. Is there a, I mean, I'm sure that's not a black and white statement, but. No. And what I meant by that is that it's not, we can't leave it entirely with the government that we can't leave it entirely with the government because the speed with which it works is, in many cases, too slow. And so in the meantime, I would hope that we could action ourselves,

like, oh, recognizing even in our own way of life and behaviors every day that we could be working harder at building community and getting to know people enough that we know when they might need some support that we may be able to offer them. Sure. So maybe just staying with you, where would you go, having heard the proposals that your colleagues have made,

where would you go kind of as a starting point? Well, I think data is incredibly important and something I talk a lot about in my research is that we need to bring the tools of the new and old ancestors together for the benefit of all. And, you know, there's so much power in the specificity of the data that we can get now where these sort of cookie cutter blanket approaches over landscapes, they don't work. But if we can get to know a greater level of specificity within communities, we can get those localized results

that we're looking for and empower people, you know, in that. So, yeah. And both, one of the concerns that comes up always with data are privacy concerns and, you know, how much data, how much do we know about everybody's actions? How do you deal with those questions? Those are questions that come up all the time. I think one thing that I didn't say about satellite data in particular, we have lots and lots of free and open satellite data. And a lot of these satellites that are being put up to space, whether it's from the Canadian Space Agency, the European, NASA, are all free and open.

And I think for the purpose of aiding and providing more transparency, of course then there are the questions about, well, how much information do you have about my specific farm? And I think those are really important dialogues about how do we use these data. And not only, I think we're seeing more and more increase in a lot of technology and tools, whether it's AI and cloud computing and the convergence of all these information. And I think it's not only data, but it's being honest about what the data is and giving the uncertainties around,

you know, you run a model and you get a result, but making sure that we're really transparent and honest about what that data is actually saying, how it was produced, how it was validated, are really important questions on that as well. I'll get back to you. Go ahead, Paul. Actually, I think that's so important

for a number of reasons. I want to pick up on a couple of pieces. The first was around government slowness. I think we all need to reject this. I think we, you know, we just need to go back a little while to the CERB. The CERB came out very, very quickly. When government prioritizes something and sees it as an urgent, something urgent, they will move quickly. You mean the payments that were given out during COVID? Exactly. So I think governments convince us that they can be slow. But again, they prioritize things when they need to. I think the question of data is really important and what data we look at.

Because in this country, for example, when we look at the data around poverty, it tells a wonderful story. we have, you know, members of parliament, government officials of every ilk, speaking about the incredible impacts that we're having around reducing poverty. But actually, poverty is some arbitrary, the line, the measure is quite arbitrary. I think the thing that's really important about food insecurity data is it speaks to people's lived experience. And that is going a very different direction than the data around poverty. So, yes, data is super key and being critical and interrogating it and understanding where that

data is coming from and who's asking the questions and for what purpose, I think, is critical. Nala, can I just push back just a little bit? Absolutely. And please don't wait for me. Don't pay any of you. Please, go ahead. You know, it's not about letting government off the hook when we characterize it as slow. But our communities have suffered for many, many years waiting for the government to do something. And so I think it's about empowering ourselves to do something in the meantime. And like, yes, when government's motivated, they can answer quickly. But then we're relying on them to prioritize what's affecting us in our day-to-day lives and so I think it's like you know there's not one silver bullet here but it's like what are

we doing while we're waiting for them and ever like I sit with elders all the time they're like they're done waiting right they're like you just got to go you just got to do this yeah Patrick just your thoughts we'll go back to the round of questions but but your thoughts as you're listening to this conversation about government, because you must see examples of this around the world. Let's imagine, even though government is maybe our first priority, that we're writing a white paper for a government. Where would you begin in radically changing the picture of food security? At this point, I put most of my efforts in trying to connect dots. So given that climate change is so directly linked to food systems, ensuring better integration of diets and food systems into the COP process and the climate change agenda. But the same applies to the human justice agenda, which doesn't always think about food

systems as a priority entry point. Same thing, the human health. The public health practitioners don't always think about food. In fact, they rarely think about nutrition. But given that poor diets are such a major underpinning of poor human health, which is crippling health budgets in many countries around the world, there are linkages there. So in a sense, trying to use food, food insecurity, dietary patterns, as the linchpin that enables us to tell this narrative and show how these things are all connected, we all have to eat eat and bringing that to the core of the discussion humanizes it but also makes it possible to link to these other systems thinking that need to be done and well what would be your answer to that having heard what your colleagues said

and i think it's around well i agree with with what's been said i think it's around asking the right questions making sure that when you're developing the data, collecting the data, it is with that purpose and in an honest way and converting that data into information. And I think that's where a lot of the challenges are is we have loads of data. But how do you actually transfer that into information, into the hands of those that need that in order to make decisions? And I think that's really critical for everything that we're seeing. make decisions. And I think that's really critical for everything that we're seeing. As people who are working in different areas, but all on a topic that affects so many of us, how do you ensure, how do you begin to make sure that the message is coherent, that these different parts of thinking about food security are actually working hand in glove? Is there a forum for that?

Patrick, could you speak to that? Is there a forum for that? Patrick, could you speak to that? Is there anything resembling that, aside from this conversation here today? I, you know, we've never met. We come from very different backgrounds, but I think we share, we may not have exactly the same idea, but I think we share a pretty good core. So I don't think there needs to be necessarily a forum that dictates, because I think we all need to speak to our own audiences with a similar message strongly that isn't at purposes. And I don't think they are at purposes, essentially. The ideas of food insecurity are constantly evolving. It's not that there needs to be one place where everything is agreed. I think we're doing well. I think we just need to

build on our collective enthusiasm, outrage, and energy to reach diverse audiences. That's my view. I know we want to talk about solutions, but I do want to have a very quick answer from each of you. And Paul, back to you. What's the cost of not acting urgently on the question of food insecurity? It'll continue to increase. We will continue to have families across this country and parents across this country looking in their kids' eyes

and not knowing whether or not they can feed them. And that, to me, is horrific. We're here in Toronto, you know, in one of the richest countries in the world, richest province, richest city. Certainly we should be leading with demonstrating what it means to care for one another and ensure that the youngest among us have access to food, all of us have access to food. And Bao? I think we can't afford not to. I think we are in

unparalleled territory in terms of food insecurity, locally to globally. And I think we recognize that and we have to move and we have to move quickly. It's urgent. Jen? Well, I think it's just not being treated like the emergency that it is. And I think that those of us that belong to groups who have been disproportionately affected by it, you know, it's very frustrating that it's taking this long for the rest of the world to wake up to it. And so I think, you know, we need to see more of us in these interdisciplinary storytelling roles leading that discussion to make sure the right questions get asked and the right interpretation of the data, you know, happens.

And Patrick? The estimated costs of putting food systems transformation into place are, you know, anyone's guess, but let's say 300 billion a year, billion a year. A lot of money, but hey, not all that much compared to the whole world economy. The cost of doing nothing and being forced to act 30 years from now when our world planet is burning and everything that we see today, you can ramp up 20-fold, is going to be trillions. And yeah, there doesn't seem to be the urgency to take this on yet.

So we have to be making this clear to more people. Paul, Inbal, Jennifer, and Patrick, thank you so much for sharing your insights. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Not long enough. On Ideas, you were listening to Food Security, Root Causes and Pathways to Change.

It was recorded at the Arrow Food Summit at the Toronto Region Board of Trade. Special thanks to Evan Fraser, Director of the Arrow Food Institute at the University of Guelph. Thanks as well to Muriel O'Doherty with the Arrow Food Institute. You can find more information about the guests featured in this program on our website, cbc.ca slash ideas. And while you're on our website, feel free to click on the Contact Us button to share your thoughts about this program

or any other episode you've heard on Ideas. This episode was produced by Nikola Lukšić. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.