Extreme weather events like fires, floods, heat waves and droughts pose an increasing risk to Canada’s food supply chain, putting pressure on prices all the way to the grocery store shelf, say experts.
“Anytime you have major weather-related events, it tends to increase costs,” said Frank Scali, vice-president of industry affairs at Food, Health & Consumer Products Of Canada.
These kinds of events are becoming more frequent and intense in Canada and around the globe.
A 2019 federal government report said temperatures are projected to keep increasing, driven by human influence, while precipitation is also projected to increase.
Weather plays a big role in food production, and factors like too much or too little heat or moisture can affect not only the volume of food produced, but also the prevalence of pests and diseases, said Amanda Norris, senior economist at Farm Credit Canada.
“Weather can also impact activities further down the supply chain,” she said. “For example, you might have damaged infrastructure from floods that changes transportation routes and the ability to move those products along the food supply chain.”
‘A cascade of challenges’
Shortages caused by extreme weather can also drive food prices higher if supply isn’t able to meet demand, she said.
According to a July report from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, the agriculture industry has faced a “cascade of challenges” recently, including climate change, with the ripple effects of these headwinds reverberating throughout the supply chain.
In a survey for the report, respondents from the industry as well as members of government identified extreme weather as one of the top risks to the agricultural sector.
Major flooding in British Columbia three years ago hit farmers hard, with hundreds of thousands of chickens and other farm animals dying.
Drought in 2023 strained crop production in Saskatchewan, with output declining almost 11 per cent, two years after a historic 47 per cent production decline due to extreme heat and drought.
The agriculture industry has been able to make itself somewhat more resilient to things like drought by changing some of its practices, said Tyler McCann, managing director at the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, such as using a no-till technique to keep more moisture in the earth.
Those practices can’t protect crops from the most extreme weather, he said, but they do help in other years.
Impact of international weather events
Extreme weather in other parts of the world can also affect farmers if input costs, like fertilizer, go up, or if there’s a shortage of a major crop that wreaks havoc on commodity prices, said McCann.
“An extreme weather event in China or India at the wrong time could lead to pretty significant, devastating consequences, because there really isn’t enough wheat in the…
Read More: How extreme weather affects food prices in Canada
