“Millions of people will die,” said Andy Harrington.

Governments are drastically slashing their international development assistance budgets to focus on domestic concerns and military spending.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns that global funding for humanitarian aid fell by a third in 2025.

“It’s really quite catastrophic,” said Harrington.

WHY IT MATTERS: Millions of people will die.

Harrington said he was standing outside a childhood malnutrition centre in South Sudan earlier this year where there was a lineup of children suffering from hunger.

“We’re not talking, ‘we missed a meal here;’ we’re talking seriously acute malnutrition with consequences for life,” he said.

As he was taking in that disturbing scene, he was informed that the centre would be shutting down in 24 hours with no prior notice.

It was one of 1,100 centres being shuttered in South Sudan alone, all casualties of budget cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Lancet, a medical journal published in Britain, estimates that 14 million people will die by 2030 because of the USAID belt-tightening.

But it is not just USAID. Britain, Germany, the European Union and many other governments around the world are also chopping their humanitarian aid budgets.

The Canadian government announced in its 2025 budget that it will be reducing foreign aid spending by $2.7 billion between 2026 and 2030.

Harrington has been told that most of the cuts will be to long-term development programs rather than emergency assistance.

In the meantime, global hunger is spreading at a pace not seen in decades.

“Gaza crossed into famine, following Sudan, where famine started in 2024 and grew in 2025,” he said.

“These are stark reminders of the human cost of inaction, and how quickly hunger can escalate when the world chooses to look away.”

The number of acutely food insecure people nearly tripled to 295 million people in 2024 from 105 million in 2016, according to the Global Report on Food Crises.

“We get lost in the numbers, but these are real human beings,” said Harrington.

“These are mothers and fathers with children that they’re watching starve.”

Harrington fully expects that the number of acutely food insecure people grew in 2025 and will only get worse in 2026 as more funding cuts take effect.

He believes it is not too late for Canada to reverse course and drop the looming cuts to its international aid budget.

“Before we make these cuts, we have to question ourselves as a country and say, ‘who do we want to be?’ ” he said.

“When others are stepping back, we need to be stepping forward and standing with the world.”

Future funding

Harrington understands that Canadians are facing a cost-of-living crisis at home, but he noted that the average inflation rate in the countries where the Canadian Foodgrains Bank works is 45 per cent.

That is a harrowing statistic for a family living on a few dollars per week.

He worries what impact the government cuts will have on his organization, which receives about 40 per cent of its funding from Ottawa and the remainder from private donations.

In the 2024-25 budget year, the organization provided $74.6 million of assistance to 1.18 million people overseas.

He doesn’t anticipate much of a funding reduction for the upcoming fiscal year, but he is concerned about future years as the proposed government cuts take effect.

Harrington said it is going to be hard for organizations such as his to fill the massive gaps that have been created in humanitarian aid programs because they are already overstretched.

He is grateful that private donors appear to be stepping up to help fill the void.

However, if governments don’t reverse course in a few short years, people around the world will be asking themselves, “what have we done?” when they turn on their televisions.

“The pictures are going to be horrific,” said Harrington.

He is confident those disturbing pictures will trigger a wave of public empathy and support.

However, it will be far more costly in terms of both money and human lives to address the horror at that stage rather than preventing it from happening today.

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a partnership of 15 churches and church agencies that works with local partners in 37 countries.

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“The Food Freedom Day analysis shows us that despite Canada being a global food supplier, there are large segments of Canadians that are struggling with food affordability, and this burden seems to be growing,” said CFA president Keith Currie in a Feb. 6 news release.

“Food Freedom Day” fell on Feb. 8, the same date as last year, the CFA said. Canadian spent 10.8 per cent of their disposable income on food and beverages in 2025 compared to 10.7 per cent in 2024.

“Average disposable income figures don’t fully reflect the pressure that rising food costs place on households, especially those with lower incomes,” the CFA said. “Global disruptions and inflationary pressures have further strained food affordability and food security across the country.”

Households in the lowest quintile of income spent 28.20 per cent of disposable incomes on food, the CFA said, citing StatCan data. Households in the highest income quintile spent 5.18 per cent.

CUSMA review a risk

While food price inflation has slowed in some categories, food prices are 27 per cent higher than they were in 2020, the most recent Canada’s Food Price Report showed. Meat prices led hikes in 2025. As such, food affordability continues to be a key concern for consumers.

A quarter of Canadians are considered food insecure and 2.2 million people visited food banks monthly last year.

The CFA flagged the review of the CUSMA trade agreement as a future risk for food prices. Most food products are exempt from tariffs under CUSMA and any shift could be costly for consumers.

“With the threat of tariffs hanging over our head from the U.S. and other major trading partners, these food affordability concerns only highlight the critical importance of a united Canadian approach to maintaining open and predictable North American trade,” Currie said.

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“We’re working to address the root causes of inflation and working on longer-term solutions to bring down the cost of groceries in Canada,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney. “That starts by improving the resilience of our supply chains.”

“Global supply chain shocks caused by tariffs, weather events from a changing climate, and geopolitical disruptions have caused food prices to rise faster than overall inflation,” he added.

Carney announced Monday morning the government’s new plans for a national food security strategy, including support for food infrastructure and the Competition Bureau, a grocery rebate and unit-label pricing.

WHY IT MATTERS: Food affordability and insecurity remain major barriers for Canadian consumers.

In the 2025 budget, the government called food security a key factor in Canada’s agricultural competitiveness. Food affordability and insecurity remain major barriers for Canadian consumers.

Tariffs have added more uncertainty to the issue, affecting prices throughout 2025. Retailers have passed on many of these supply chain costs to consumers.

The government committed $500 million from the previously announced Strategic Response Fund toward helping food businesses expand capacity.

It will also introduce immediate expensing for greenhouse buildings, allowing producers to fully write off greenhouses acquired on or after Nov. 4 of last year.

Carney said there will also be support for the Competition Bureau to monitor and enforce competition in markets.

Another announced measure is unit label pricing “so Canadians can compare easily, in this era of shrinkflation.”

— With files from Reuters

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In response, more people are growing their own food. A 2022 national survey found that just over half of respondents were growing fruits or vegetables at home, and nearly one in five started during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Municipal governments have taken note, developing food and urban agriculture strategies that promise more green space, better access to fresh food, stronger communities and sometimes climate benefits. But do they actually change conditions on the ground?

That question sits at the centre of our new study published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

London, Ont., adopted Canada’s first stand-alone Urban Agriculture Strategy in 2017. It was a hopeful signal that food and urban agriculture finally had a place on the municipal agenda. Yet, almost eight years later, many of the strategy’s goals remain unrealized.

Based on interviews and a workshop with 56 urban growers, community organizations and city staff in London, we found how a promising strategy can stall without clear leadership, resources and follow-through.

Why urban agriculture matters

Urban agriculture encompasses everything from backyard and balcony gardens to community gardens, small commercial operations, rooftop farms and community projects that process and distribute food.

Research links these activities to better mental health, stronger social connections and improved access to fresh food, especially for low-income communities, immigrants and seniors.

In London, demand for local food and garden space surged during the pandemic. The London Food Bank reported a 92 per cent increase in demand for food donations from 2021 to 2023. Community gardens across the city have long waiting lists. There is no shortage of interest or need for local food; the question is whether city policies support it.

What the strategy changed — and what it didn’t

We found that the city’s urban agriculture strategy helped advance urban agriculture in meaningful ways. Research participants told us it helped “put food on the agenda” at city hall, supporting updates to zoning and bylaws that make it easier to grow food in the city.

But when we asked urban growers and community organizations how much the strategy shaped their day-to-day work, the picture became more complicated. Roughly one-third of the people we spoke with had never heard of the strategy at all, despite actively participating in urban agriculture.

Others knew it existed but were unsure which actions had actually been implemented. Several described it as a “good starting point” that had not been backed by the staffing or funding needed for full implementation.

The strategy came with no dedicated position or budget. Responsibility was scattered across city departments, with no one tracking progress. Supportive staff helped where they could, but limited capacity meant they relied on the community to drive change.

Common challenges mentioned by urban growers and community organizations were unclear zoning and permitting processes, a lack of available land for long-term gardening and minimal financial support, leading to over-reliance on volunteers. The strategy helped normalize urban agriculture in London and opened some doors, but didn’t transform the system.

One of the strongest themes in our research was the strain on community capacity. Like many cities, London’s urban agriculture is powered by volunteers, small non-profit organizations and social enterprises. These groups are deeply committed but face rising demand, complex social needs and unstable funding. Asking them to carry a municipal strategy without matching support is unrealistic.

This echoes findings from other cities. Reviews of urban agriculture policies in Canada and the United States show that local enthusiasm often runs ahead of institutional support.

Strategies tend to celebrate urban agriculture’s potential but pay less attention to equitable land access, labour conditions and the economic realities of growing food in cities.

How cities can help urban agriculture

If other cities want to avoid London’s growing pains, our research points to several concrete steps they can take:

• Assign clear responsibility. Task a specific department, name a lead staff person and allocate ongoing funding. Without this, actions are likely to be delayed, forgotten or handled piecemeal.
• Simplify the rules and centralize information. Create accessible one-stop web pages and guidance documents that spell out what’s allowed, what permits are needed, how to access land and who to contact.
• Secure space for growing. Map under-utilized land, integrate food production into parks and use long-term leases or land trusts to provide more security for community-led projects.
• Treat community partners as co-planners. Develop strategies alongside practitioners, including those from under-represented and marginalized communities. Bring them into the process early and support their full participation, rather than seeking their feedback after decisions are set.

Urban agriculture won’t fix food insecurity — the biggest determinants remain income, housing, social supports and broader food-system policy. But our findings from London indicate that it can still deliver public value.

By committing to implementation and treating food growing as a key piece of urban infrastructure, municipalities can build healthier, better connected and more sustainable cities.

—Richard Bloomfield is an assistant professor in management and organizational studies at Huron University College at Western University. Kassie Miedema is a researcher in management and organizational studies at Huron University College at Western University. Rebecca Ellis is a sessional instructor in geography, geology and land stewardship at Algoma University.

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Okay, I really don’t know if I am any smarter than before this event. This conference brought together about 400 ag industry players ranging from primary producers to processors to educators, agricultural and environmental organizations and major food retailers. It was a very broad and interesting cross section of people and organizations involved in some aspect of the agriculture industry.

There were a few grain farmers and beef producers in the crowd while elsewhere in the main conference room were prominent food industry executives such as Galen Weston, chair of Loblaws, and Michael McCain, chair of Maple Leaf Foods.

Nutrien and Calgary Stampede were a couple of the main sponsors and partners of the food summit, along with some other familiar organizations and companies such as Alberta Grains, Pulse Canada, Farmers for Climate Solutions, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, BASF, FCC and Olds College to name a few.

So what were they all gathered for? I’m not really sure. It was the first of what is expected to become an annual conference. GLOBE, which is a well-established event planner that organized the conference said “by connecting farmers, innovators, retailers, policymakers and investors in one space, we hoped to align on shared priorities and elevate the collective voice of Canada’s agriculture and food sector.”

I might not have described it in those terms, but again I was only there for part of a day. It certainly was an event that brought together a cross section of the agriculture industry. Along with keynote speakers, there were plenty of breakout sessions and roundtable discussions intended to provide people with ideas or inspiration to take home and change their lives or at least do things differently.

One farmer I spoke with after the conference described it as two days of a lot of buzzwords, and a chance for companies to track down programs, services and practices they could align with to make themselves look more “green.” He might have been a tad cynical, but not totally wrong.

The summit was certainly an opportunity for the various sectors of the agriculture industry to connect with one another. Who knows where that networking might lead to in terms or partnerships and alliances down the road.

Quebec meat processor

One unexpected encounter for me involved meeting with Indira Moudi, president and CEO of a small federally-inspected meat packing plant in southern Quebec. Moudi and business partner Guillaume Pham are both engineers by training with no direct experience in the meat packing business.

A few years ago they bought a third-generation meat processing facility — Viandes Lafrance — at Shawinigan. That’s a Quebec community on the north side of the St. Lawrence River about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.

The founder of the business, Louis Lafrance started out in 1929, providing butchering and meat cutting services for farmers on their farms. He eventually opened an abattoir that expanded services and remained family owned for many years. In 2008, the business relocated to Shawinigan. However, with no option for family succession, the owners eventually sold the business to Moudi and Pham.

The federally-inspected slaughterhouse is the first facility to obtain multi-species accreditation from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The company is also HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) and Halal certified. The HACCP certification means they have a food safety management system in place for identifying, controlling, and preventing food hazards.

They slaughter, process and sell wholesale sheep, cattle, veal, lamb, goat, bison, llama and other specialty livestock. Moudi said their business focus is on producing “responsible meat products.” They work with local Quebec producers who follow sound environmental practices and raise their livestock under humane production practices. Eventually they plan to sell branded meat products.

I thought it was an interesting story for a couple reasons. First, Moudi and Pham are a couple engineers who got out of their comfort zone and put their energy into learning to operate a well-established family business, with a commitment to carry on values of supporting local producers, providing good service and quality products.

And perhaps it’s a model for meat processing that could work in other parts of the country. Many times over the years I’ve talked to livestock producers who often cite business limitations include finding a qualified butcher or accessible abattoir, and/or not having access to a federally-inspected facility, which makes it possible to sell products outside their province.

What else did I learn on this memorable day? I had never been to the newly renovated and expanded BMO Centre at Stampede Park. Parking was good for a start. What a beautiful big building. If you want to get in your 10,000 steps a day indoors, it is a great place for that. Everything about the building following the half billion-dollar expansion is big. A 50,000 square foot ballroom, and at 70 feet tall, the world’s largest fireplace. And getting to this conference that was on an upper level involved a ride on what is described as the longest free-standing escalator in Canada at 110 feet. I was just extremely grateful it was an escalator and not stairs.

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“These numbers aren’t just statistics – they represent seniors rationing food, parents skipping meals so their children can eat, and families being pushed to the brink of starvation,” said Stefan Epp-Koop, Foodgrains Bank senior manager for humanitarian programming, in a news release.

A U.N. report, released Monday, said 8.2 per cent of the world’s population experienced hunger — down from 8.5 per cent in 2023. Numbers continue to improve after spiking to 9.9 per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2021 report.

Number of hungry people falls below 2019 levels

This means between 638 million and 720 million people faced hunger last year. With a midpoint estimate of 673 million people, this marks the first time the actual number of people facing hunger has fallen below 2019’s estimate of 690 million people, explained Laura Brookes, the Foodgrains Bank’s senior communications officer.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, jointly prepared by five U.N. agencies, focused on chronic, long-term issues and did not fully reflect impacts of acute crises brought on by specific events, such as war in Gaza.

Maximo Torero, the chief economist for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, said improved access to food in South America and India had driven the overall decline but cautioned that conflict and other factors in places such as Africa and the Middle East risked undoing those gains.

“If conflict continues to grow, of course, if vulnerabilities continue to grow, and the debt stress continues to increase, the numbers will increase again,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. food summit in Ethiopia.

“Conflict continues to drive hunger from Gaza to Sudan and beyond,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in remarks delivered by video link to the summit. “Hunger further feeds future instability and undermines peace.”

Food costs drive insecurity

Food affordability also continues to challenge food security, the Foodgrains Bank said.

“In Sudan, the average cost of a healthy diet has risen by over 28 per cent since 2017 due to the ongoing conflict,” said Epp-Koop. “That’s a burden many would find hard to carry. But for those who were already struggling due to poverty, it often feels impossible.

Funding cuts earlier this year to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) slashed funding for about 40 per cent of the world’s international aid programs, the Foodgrains Bank said. This, combined with cuts from other Western governments, mean the number of hungry people is expected to rise this year.

The Foodgrains Bank committed to reach more than 1.1 million people in 37 countries in 2024 and 2025 with food assistance and long-term livelihood and agriculture support.

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The potato farmers are “happy to know that their hard work is not just being put into the ground. It’s feeding hungry people,” said Emily Owen, Second Harvest’s senior foodraising manager for the Prairies.

Second Harvest, billed as Canada’s largest food rescuer, was on hand at the outdoor farm show Ag in Motion near Langham, Saskatchewan, from July 15 to 17 to connect with farmers and raise awareness of their presence on the Prairies.

Initially founded in Ontario in 1985, the non-profit expanded across Canada in the last few years as the COVID-19 pandemic and economic forces spiked food insecurity, Owen said.

‘Rehoming’ food

Second Harvest essentially acts as a logistics manager for community groups and organizations that feed people. Farms, bakeries, grocery stores, restaurants, and other members of the food supply chain, contact Second Harvest to let them know they have food.

“Anything that a human can eat,” Owen said, though there are a few food safety caveats.

Second Harvest has an app through which companies can tell them they have food to donate.

The organization will then pick up the food and find a non-profit, food bank or community group that needs it. They’ll rehome the food locally if they can. The donating company, meanwhile, gets a tax receipt.

In the case of the 1.5 million pounds of potatoes, which were donated in Manitoba, those were split up into 2,000 lb tote bags, and some were taken for packaging—Second Harvest works with local processors to wash and package potatoes sometimes, Owen explained.

Some of the potatoes were sent to northern Manitoba. Some went to a storage facility in Ontario and as far as Montreal. Quite a few went into Saskatchewan.

A growing need

Canadians throw away enough good food to feed more than 17 million people, Second Harvest’s website says. Meanwhile, food insecurity has spiked in recent years.

Food Banks Canada reported there were more than two million visits to Canadian food banks in March 2024—at the time, the highest number in history and a 90 per cent increase from 2019. High food inflation and housing cost inflation were named as key causes.

In Saskatchewan, Second Harvest has seen a growing number of nonprofits, but also schools, churches and daycares, said Katharine Hepp, operations manager for Saskatchewan.

“Schools are saying we have more and more kids coming to school hungry,” she said.

Second Harvest rescued 3.5 million pounds of food in Saskatchewan last year.

“You can see that the need is going up on the nonprofits’ end, and these donors are amplifying what they’re doing in order to help meet that need,” Hepp said.

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Agriculture didn’t make the G7 agenda. It was pushed aside by more pressing issues like international security, economics, technology global migration and trade.

But the forum hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was designed to ensure agriculture and food stays on world leaders’ radar.

“Agriculture has to be an instrument of peace,” IICA director general Manuel Otero said in an interview on the opening day of the Americas AgForum. “In all of these issues, agriculture is at the centre of the solutions, so implicitly or explicitly G7 leaders have to discuss the role of agriculture.”

Climate, nutritionally smart

IICA, founded in 1942, focuses on fostering rural and agricultural development among its 34 member states across the Americas. It works to increase the sector’s contributions to rural well -being, food security and economic growth through the bioeconomy and trade.

Otero told his audience of about 150 delegates in the room and 800 watching virtually that meeting the world’s food needs over the next 40 years will be a multidimensional challenge that involves grappling with production challenges brought about by climate change as well as navigating the simultaneous crises of undernutrition and obesity.

“It is not just climate smart any more, it has to be nutritionally smart too,” he said.

Otero called for policies that enable small-holder farmers to adopt new technologies such as digital agriculture to grow productivity, and which stabilize rural economies by keeping farmers on the land. That has a stabilizing effect on cities too.

“Every time a producer becomes a consumer, we face a problem,” Otero said, noting outward migration from rural areas creates unsustainable pressure on urban infrastructure and food systems.

Speakers said making it possible for people to thrive in rural communities requires major investments in rural connectivity to make productivity-enhancing digital technology more accessible.

Need for timely innovation

The food system also needs more entrepreneurs and investment capital at all levels to bring new ideas to market, said Justine Hendricks, president and CEO of Farm Credit Canada.

“We’ve been hearing more and more the need to accelerate innovation, the time to get innovation through to commercialization is certainly too long in Canada,” she said. “Whether you are early stage or all the way through to a growth stage, some of the work we’ve done shows that in the Canadian ecosystem, there were gaps all along the way.”

FCC has recently dedicated $2 billion in spending over the next five years to support Canada’s innovation pipeline.

“Canada has got really outstanding innovation hubs, our education system is second to none, we’ve got land, we’ve got water we’ve got what the world wants,” she said. “Canada has this generational opportunity. We just need to bring those things closer together.”

Plus, it requires building a foundation of trust with consumers beneath the sector’s never-ending drive to innovate.

Lisa Bishop-Spencer, executive director for the Canadian Centre for Food integrity, said public trust in the food system has been eroded in recent years, but Canada doesn’t face that trend alone.

“This is common across many countries in the Americas,” she said.

“What we know is that people trust farmers, they trust individuals. Where they start to lose that trust is when it starts to become more institutional in its setting,” she said.

“’Innovation’ is a wonderful word and it means so much to our industry, but consumers are afraid of innovation,” Bishop-Spencer said.

“When you position it terms of outcomes that’s when it becomes more resonate for people,” she said. “People understand the values behind the little red barn and little green tractor are still behind what do no matter what scale we do it at.”

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This means considering how impacts of policy differently affects rural and urban areas, said Dr. Wayne Caldwell, a professor of rural planning at the University of Guelph.

“It not only impacts people in their lives, it impacts the economy of rural communities,” he said.

Caldwell said he has seen success with this approach at a local level. Ontario’s Huron County has used a rural lens for some time.

“It’s almost like a checklist of making sure that … we thought about, how do these decisions make economic and financial sense at a rural community level?”

Food lens top priority for some producers

The idea of a food lens for policy has gained traction among commodity groups. Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada (FVGC) placed it as its top priority in a 2025 election platform.

Yves Millette, CEO of financial service Farm Business Consultants (FBC) said he thinks many Canadians are finally realizing how important it is for Canada to protect its food sector — particularly as it becomes clearer Canadian and U.S. policy will no longer be aligned.

He pointed to recent trade disputes with China as an example of how seemingly unrelated policy decisions can saddle producers with the fallout.

“The attacks that we’ve put on Chinese (electric) vehicles in turn has affected agriculture, canola exports,” Millette said.

Lack of regional representation

The number of MPs representing agriculture and rural communities isn’t necessarily the problem when it comes to representation said Grace Skogstad, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.

The issue is that few are on the government side or in cabinet because most rural ridings vote Conservative.

“When you’ve got Liberal governments, the rural ridings are represented on the opposition bench … considerably more than they are on the government side of the house,” Skogstad said.

This is also a barrier to effective regional representation.

“The conundrum for Western farmers is that they are Conservative voters,” Skogstad said. “If (a Liberal government) doesn’t have any more than one MP out of Saskatchewan and two MPs out of Alberta and they’re both representing urban ridings, it’s difficult.”

Millette said it is important for regionality to be a consideration since different geography can mean very different living situations for rural residents and farmers.

“If we’re traveling around in southwestern Ontario, it is a very rich farm belt for Canada,” he said. “To get to a medium sized city, it’s just not a hard task, right? You could draw a circle and you’re probably within, you know, 30-45, minutes of a center.”

“When you’re in Saskatchewan, there’s essentially two centers,” he continued. “There’s a lot of isolation … how do I get my services? Do I have to go to the big city? Can I get them locally?”

Skogstad suggested the Senate could act as a solution to this issue of regional representation, giving Western Canada and its agricultural interests the voice they need, though this would largely informal.

Canadian senators affiliated with agriculture like Rob Black, Todd Lewis and Mary Robinson could act as these liaisons.

“I think that’s the best you could do, is hope that the ag minister, whoever he or she is, would really … try to make sure that they have a channel of communication with a person like that,” Skogstad said.

Powering Canadian self-sufficiency

Millette said agriculture’s ability to power Canadian self-sufficiency makes ensuring representation in government important.

“We are fortunate to have clean water and lots of land, and we’re able to create export markets for our products,” he said. “You have to protect those key industries that aren’t frankly beholden to big corporations that headquarters somewhere else.”

“Take the example of auto workers. Super important sector, but we’re not the masters of our own destiny when it comes to that. When it comes to agriculture, we are.”

“It’s really easy to get drowned out if you just do it on a population count perspective,” he said.

Caldwell argued that representation is important because agriculture is relevant to all Canadians.

“I will often ask the question when I’m doing a presentation … how many people like to eat? And with that question, virtually every hand in the room will go up,” he said, “which says to me that 100 per cent of the population has an interest in our agriculture and food system.”

“With the shenanigans south of the border, it just speaks to the importance of having an independent voice, an independent industry that supports the 100 per cent of us that like to eat.”

Taking a full view of the system

Skogstad said Canada could learn from the E.U. Farm to Fork strategy, which takes a full view of the food system and tries to put it on a more sustainable path.

“It extends to the upstream. It extends to the downstream. It pays quite a lot of attention to consumers,” she said.

“You could argue that what we’ve got when we’ve got agriculture policy, even though it’s called Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, by and large it … focuses on agriculture production.”

“You take a food system lens to this, then agriculture is just one part of that.” She said this would allow for a more fulsome view of alternate modes of production and rural communities.

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“We’re seeing some western governments walking away from people experiencing extreme hunger,” said Canadian Foodgrains Bank executive director Andy Harrington in a news release.

“This is not the time for us to turn our backs. If we do, people will die.”

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a Christian relief and development agency originally established by farmers.

Acute food insecurity and child malnutrition rose for a sixth consecutive year in 2024, affecting more than 295 million people across 53 countries and territories, according to a UN report released on Friday.

This marks a five per cent increase from 2023 levels, with 22.6 per cent of populations in worst-hit regions experiencing crisis-level hunger or worse.

“The sad and distressing fact is that so much of this hunger is completely preventable,” said Harrington.

“The 2025 Global Report on Food Crises paints a staggering picture,” said Rein Paulsen, director of emergencies and resilience at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The number of people facing famine-like conditions more than doubled to 1.9 million — the highest since monitoring for the global report began in 2016.

Nearly 38 million children under five were acutely malnourished across 26 nutrition crises, including in Sudan, Yemen, Mali and Gaza.

“Conflict, weather extremes and economic shocks are the main drivers, and they often overlap,” Paulsen said.

Sharp drop in funding to worsen conditions

Conflict was the leading cause of hunger, impacting nearly 140 million people across 20 countries in 2024, including areas facing “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity in Gaza, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. Sudan has confirmed famine conditions.

Economic shocks, such as inflation and currency devaluation, helped push 59.4 million people into food crises in 15 countries — nearly double the levels seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — including Syria and Yemen.

Extreme weather, particularly El Niño-induced droughts and floods, shunted 18 countries into crisis, affecting more than 96 million people, especially in Southern Africa, Southern Asia, and the Horn of Africa.

Forced displacement also exacerbated hunger. Nearly 95 million forcibly displaced people, including refugees and internally displaced persons, lived in countries facing food crises, such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia.

Looking ahead, the UN warned of worsening conditions this year, citing the steepest projected drop in humanitarian food funding since the report’s inception — put at anywhere between 10 per cent to more than 45 per cent.

Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump largely shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides aid to the world’s needy, cancelling more than 80 per cent of its humanitarian programs.

“Millions of hungry people have lost, or will soon lose, the critical lifeline we provide,” warned Cindy McCain, the head of the Rome-based World Food Programme.

Some progress seen

“It is a tragedy that for nearly 300 million people on our planet, extreme hunger is a reality through no fault of their own,” said Foodgrains Bank senior humanitarian manager Stefan Epp-Koop.

Epp-Koop travelled with Harrington to South Sudan in March to witness the devastation of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. He said Foodgrains Bank members and their partners are providing essential aid to people experiencing extreme hunger. New programing has also been approved in countries like Haiti and Myanmar.

Despite the grim overall trend, 2024 saw some progress. In 15 countries, including Ukraine, Kenya and Guatemala, food insecurity eased due to humanitarian aid, improved harvests, easing inflation and a decline in conflict.

To break the cycle of hunger, the report called for investment in local food systems. “Evidence shows that supporting local agriculture can help the most people, with dignity, at lower cost,” Paulsen said.

—With files from Glacier FarmMedia

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