The Growing Challenge: How Canada Can Lead the Next Green Revolution in Agriculture

Extreme weather and geopolitical turmoil have placed the world’s food systems under tremendous stress.

At the same time, climate change is slowing agricultural productivity among major producing nations, there’s a growing need for more food: globally, over 800 million people are food insecure — meaning that they don’t have access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet their daily needs. In Canada, one-in-six people are food insecure. As a top agricultural exporter, Canada has both a responsibility and an opportunity to help. But agriculture is also one of the biggest contributors to our carbon footprint: by one estimate, 10% of Canada's emissions are from crop and livestock production.

How can Canada feed a growing population while simultaneously slashing emissions? That’s the problem we’ll tackle in a special three-part series on Disruptors, an RBC podcast, called, “The Growing Challenge”. In it, co-hosts John Stackhouse and Trinh Theresa Do speak with some of the top innovators and big-picture thinkers who are helping Canadian agriculture meet this grand challenge.

In our first episode, John and Theresa speak with Sonya Hoo, a managing partner at BCG who studies the Canadian food and agricultural sector, Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph and author of the new book, “Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth”, Kristjan Hebert, managing partner of Hebert Grain Ventures (HGV), a large grain and oilseed operation in southeast Saskatchewan, and Murad Al-Katib, president and CEO of AGT Food and Ingredients, a global value-added pulses, staple foods and ingredient company.

By one account, humanity must produce more food over the next four decades than we have in the last 8,000 years of agriculture combined. Can we make it happen — while simultaneously lowering our greenhouse gas emissions? Tune in over the next few weeks to find out!

To learn more about BCG’s work on food systems and food security — follow this link, and to learn more about their Centre for Canada’s Future, click here.

The Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph has a mission to “bring people together to conduct research, train the next generation of food leaders and shape social, industrial and governmental decisions”; to read some of their work, click here. And to check out director Evan Fraser’s new book—which he co-wrote with author Lenore Newman—follow this link.

Farmer Kristjan Hebert has his own website, if you’d like to find out the latest on what he’s up to. Kristjan also appeared recently on The Farm CPA Podcast; you can listen to his interview here.

To learn more about Murad Al-Katib’s business, AGT Food and Ingredients, follow this link. Murad is also chair of the federal government’s Economic Strategy Table for agri-food. To read more about their work, click here.

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