Canada’s farmers are doing a lot of things right when it comes to sustainability. The problem, according to researchers and policy folks, is that the country still can’t clearly prove that progress, mostly because the data behind it is messy, patchy or outdated.
“We have an incredible agriculture and food sector in Canada,” said Amanda Richardson, executive director of the Centre for Agri-Food Benchmarking, when speaking about the 2025 National Index on Agri-Food Performance.
WHY IT MATTERS: The National Index on Agri-Food Performance shows how fragmented and outdated Canada’s farm sustainability data still is, and why measuring real progress remains tricky.
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The index is part of a growing effort to give Canada one shared, trustworthy set of numbers on how the ag and food system is doing.
For years, farmers and companies have been implementing sustainable practices throughout the industry, but that hasn’t stopped them from being scrutinized.
“It’s a challenge to demonstrate progress and to measure sustainability overall,” Richardson said at a webinar hosted by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute on Dec. 11.
That’s where the index comes in. It puts everyone’s data, from government, industry and researchers, into one framework. The resulting report is a “framework of indicators and metrics” that is built by a coalition of over 165 partners, she added.
Lots of good work, but hard to show it
The new index shows Canada holding steady or improving in areas like water quality, soil metrics, and greenhouse gas emissions. But some of the numbers used to prove that are old. Some are inconsistent. Others don’t exist at all.
The reports’ wildlife habitat capacity indicator, for instance, is stuck using data from 2015. By next year, it’ll only have advanced to using 2020 numbers.
“As we’re looking at making real time decisions and recommendations moving forward, that’s the challenge,” Richardson said.
Another issue is that every group in the sector measures things differently.
“We can collect data all day long,” she said. “But it’s collected in a way that’s fragmented.”
That makes it hard to compare, and even harder to explain to consumers, customers, or trading partners who want clear proof of sustainable practices.
Making sense of what’s out there
The first step isn’t making new data, it’s figuring out what already exists, said Michelle Edwards, director of Agri-Food Data Strategy at the University of Guelph.
“Right now we don’t know what we don’t know.”
And while there might be interesting data sets being collected in different regions in Canada, analysts don’t know they exist because people don’t seem to be sharing data.
Without documentation, including what was measured, how, and who did it, who did it, Edwards said even decent data becomes “questionable.”
Complicating things, it seems like everyone keeps trying to build their own systems instead of co-ordinating, Edwards believes.
“Everybody’s trying to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “Can we stop? Let’s sit down in the room together.”
Policy makers want data, but it has to line up
Jessica Norup, director of climate policy and partnerships at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, said the government needs better information just as much as farmers do.
“There are often misunderstandings about there always being trade offs between profitability and environmental action,” Norup said. “And I think the key to basically dispelling that myth is through data and evidence.”
But she said Canada’s fractured approach gets in the way. The federal emissions inventory, for example, can’t show most on-farm practice changes, because it’s built for a different purpose.
“Because it’s fractured, because we’re not talking to each other … no one knows whether you’re using the same methodologies and approaches,” Norup said.
The challenge is finding a way to bring everyone together and make sure they’re all on the same page.
Industry wants good metrics
The index is also working through tough questions around pesticides and plant breeding. In both areas, numbers can easily be misused or taken out of context.
It’s not just about putting data out there, said Brittany Lacasse of CropLife Canada.
“The important part is that we’re being thoughtful, and we have really good data to tell this really important story.”
Lacasse said the Index’s collaborative approach matters. Groups that rarely talk to each other are now sharing the same table.
Labour a part of sustainability
Labour shortages continue to weigh on food processors across the country, and Kevin Elder, a project manager of Food Processing Skills Canada, said data matters there as well.
“I think the labour force is critical to the discussion on sustainability. They’re the people that are going to carry out the work,” Elder said.
But just like environmental data, labour numbers get thin once you zoom in on specific regions or sectors.
“We just don’t have the numbers,” he added.
Younger workers increasingly want to be part of companies that take sustainability seriously, he said, something better data could help highlight.
What success looks like
For Richardson, the end goal is simple: Canada should be able to show real, measurable progress, not just talk about it.
In 10 years, she hopes the sector can look back and see clear improvements, and have the numbers to back them up. Until then, she says the priority is getting the data right.
Fiscal pressure can be a catalyst for clarity, Richardson added.
“It challenges us to be strategic about what matters most, to invest in the right data at the right time for the right purpose. And that’s what we’re trying to do with the National Index.”
