Meinung: Ein Viertel der Kanadier leidet unter Ernährungsunsicherheit. Die Lösung dieses Problems muss eine nationale Priorität sein
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-quarter-of-canadians-are-food-insecure-addressing-this-must-be-a/
Meinung: Ein Viertel der Kanadier leidet unter Ernährungsunsicherheit. Die Lösung dieses Problems muss eine nationale Priorität sein
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-quarter-of-canadians-are-food-insecure-addressing-this-must-be-a/
4 Kommentare
Unfortunately, the problem is much more complex than it sounds. To address cost, we either need to increase supply or decrease demand. The government can’t force producers to make more food, and the recent population decline hasn’t made a dent in food prices yet. To address affordability, we need to have wage growth outpace inflation. This is easier said than done.
There needs to be a real strategy put in place. The dairy cartel has been talked about many times but there is no political will do handle it. The feds throw so much money around. They should start supporting new farms or indoor cultivating. If you can grow cannabis, you can grow tomatoes
I find it remarkable that Liberals are somehow able to pass themselves off as compassionate after implementing policies so disastrous that millions more Canadians need food banks just to get by each month, millions are forced to choose between eating and heating their homes, and an entire generation was locked out of the housing market.
This is all downstream from the cost of housing. Housing has been taking an increasingly larger share of income, whereas food has not. We had a few inflation years post-Covid, but now real-wages are now growing faster than CPI (representing food prices) and inflation. Profit margins for grocers were in the 1-3% range for the past several years. Profits break records because the population level is record-breaking, and not everything in stores is equally profitable (boutique organic boxed products, frozen foods and milk alternatives are more profitable than canned beans at $2 CAD and bananas at $1.50 a kilo).
Strict price-controls that have been implemented in countries like Venezuela and Cuba led to food shortages and famine (if farmers cannot profit, they switch away from subsistence foods). That is a complete non-starter. You can try co-ops, but we have those and they don’t lead to better prices for consumers, which is not really surprising considering the margins. The scale of large grocers allows them to set low prices, this is how Walmart was able to undercut small competition all those years ago and still do. Canadians for their part can frequent Walmart and Costco which Loblaws and the like have to compete with.
We have a failure at all levels of government. At least at the federal level they’re throwing a few billion at it, but municipally and provincially we need policy reform to build more.