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Answering the Question: Is Sustainable Food Economical?
ANintegral component of the science of food is the business of food, so when this book crossed our desk, we took notice. After digging in and reading the first few chapters, we decided the best option was to share the editor’s overview. More than 20 authors contribute to a collection of essays that forms the framework for a more balanced, sustainable food system.
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Excerpt from THE ECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABLE FOOD: SMART POLICIES FOR HEALTH AND THE PLANET, introduction
by Nicoletta Batini, editor; Island Press, 2021 (320 pp.) So far, twenty-first-century macroeconomists have largely ignored food systems. This is odd, considering that the agri-food sector is both the largest, fastest-growing industry in the world and the major employer in the developing world. Perhaps more worryingly, many macroeconomists have overlooked the fact that our current food systems pose several existential threats to people and economies. First, almost half of humanity is chronically malnourished, and most of the rest is either overweight or obese, because the food we produce is less and less nutritious and the way we distribute it globally is grossly inefficient and vulnerable to disruptions. This has huge implications for labour productivity and health expenditures and, accordingly, for private and public finances.
Second, industrial food production, from intensive monocrops and confined animal operations in the Northern Hemisphere to thousands of small-scale ranchers in the Amazon serving the cattle industry, is bringing entire ecosystems to biological collapse, causing a human-made mass extinction. Crucially, the food system is the top contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the number one degrader of natural resources, including water and air.
Third, human diets have shifted progressively toward consumption of more foods derived from animals. Many of these animals are fed from birth with growth-promoting subtherapeutic dosages of antibiotics, generating conditions for the proliferation of new, untreatable superbugs resistant to known antimicrobials. Industrial animal farming operations that raise large numbers of animals in confined spaces also breed bacteria and viruses such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, and the 2009 swine flu H1N1. Even more concerning is the spread of zoonotic diseases such as SARS-CoV, Zika, HIV, Ebola, and today’s SARS-CoV-2, as more and more pathogens confined for millennia to the animal kingdom jump species to infect ours. This spread is traceable to the increasing disturbance of wildlife, both through the consumption of wild animals for food and through the loss of wildlife habitat as more land is cleared for farming and urbanization.
The impact of each one of these threats on people and the planet is immense and is economically unbearable, making their combined adverse effects too large to conceive. The good news is that this implies that reforming food systems promises incredible opportunities to advance both human and environmental wellbeing. Apart from feeding us properly and conserving the natural world, well-managed food systems can secure multiple social, economic and environmental goals, such as keeping humanity healthy and well-nourished, sustaining inclusive trade and income, and creating millions of local high-quality jobs. In this sense, reforming food systems is central to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the pledges of the Paris Climate Agreement.
The first step is to recognize that economic health is human health is planetary health.
The Great Food Transformation
At the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, delegates spoke of a “Great Energy Transformation” needed to ensure a clean and secure energy future. No less urgent for the future of the planet is what we might call a “Great Food Transformation.”
Importantly, agriculture, fishing and forestry are fundamentally different from other industrial sectors in that the former deal with living substances subject to their own laws, whereas the latter do not. Altering these laws, as through synthetic fertilization or genetic manipulation of factory-raised animals, is creating biological imbalances of vast proportions, the effects of which are known to be either extremely dangerous or totally unpredictable. The crises of the modern food system – malnutrition, diseases, and ecosystem collapse – generate incommensurate economic costs. However, the importance of developing economic policies that can help transform the system have long disappeared from the economic profession’s radar screen because of the widespread belief that producing food industrially would solve global food problems. Reflecting this belief, economic analysis regularly disregards the primary sector and its interactions with the rest of the economy, and macroeconomic policy design largely abstracts from it on the grounds of the low value added and job intensity of the sector in the advanced world.
Accordingly, when major developments wreak havoc on the food system, such as foodborne pandemics, mass extinctions, spikes in food prices, record crop losses or record deforestation from abnormal wildfire seasons, they are treated as exogenous, unanticipated “shocks” even if they are the direct result of specific public or private agents’ actions. The joint health and economic crises unleashed by the coronavirus outbreak and the burning down of large sections of the Amazon rainforest in 2019–2020 demonstrate that ignoring the role played by food systems in the economy is an expensive mistake not just from a public health and environmental perspective but also from an economic point of view. This is because food systems are an integral part of economic systems and intersect with human activity in many ways. Food systems do not only feed us, influence our health and shape the way we interact with the natural world – including climate and pathogens. They also affect employment and labor productivity, drive international trade and domestic intermediate exchanges, and via land and sea rights have traditionally spurred exploration, commerce and financial activities, helping to build nations’ wealth.
Step One
To begin with, policymakers need to understand the public health, economic and environmental trade-offs between using land and sea for food production and their use for competing activities: urban, extractive, industrial, recreational and conservational. In addition, policymakers need to appreciate the different impacts of alternative food systems on natural
resources, biological diversity and greenhouse gas emissions. Farming and fishing methods that are more resource intensive eat into resources that could be used for other ends, raising the opportunity cost of producing food relative to methods that are less resource intensive. Also, policymakers need to have a clear sense of how different diets affect health. Diets that are healthier are less burdensome for people and the economy because they minimize the risk of premature death, the need for and cost of sick care and nonmedical care, and losses of work and income due to illnesses. In recent years, researchers have come up with precise measures of these relative impacts and have arrived at three broad conclusions.
First, the true cost of food produced industrially is very high for people, nature and the economy (IPCC 2019). In contrast, regenerative agriculture and fishing follow ecological principles that can heal the environment, are more adaptive to changes in climate and produce nutritious, safe food that is comparatively cheap (FAO 2019; FOLU 2019; UNEP 2019). Second, diets that are primarily plant based are healthier and more sustainable than diets that are heavy in animal products (Willet et al. 2019). Finally, biological diversity of both animals and plants is key to human food security because a significant diversity of organisms is necessary to protect the web of life that sustains crops and livestock. Conservation of pristine ecosystems is also essential to stabilize climate, which in turn shelters food production from an exacerbation of extreme weather events and global warming (IPBES 2019). Step Two
Having identified the direction in which food systems must go for health and planet, society needs clear operational frameworks to guide shifts at the country or regional level. Ideally, these frameworks should reflect scenarios obtained with integrated land and sea use models calibrated nationally. These models can typically compare the environmental, dietary and socioeconomic implications of alternative production and consumption templates given specific geographic, resource, climate and cultural initial conditions in various places around the world.
The joint health and economic crises unleashed by the coronavirus outbreak and the burning down of large sections of the Amazon rainforest in 2019–2020 demonstrate that ignoring the role played by food systems in the economy is an expensive mistake not just from a public health and environmental perspective but also from an economic point of view.
In turn, these frameworks can be weaved into larger analytical and modeling setups involving energy planning and macroeconomic variables, such as the country’s international trade balance, to assess the overall environmental and socioeconomic impact of competing food supply models. Advanced geospatial models of land, food production and trade can then be built to test policy options and develop pathways, as has been done successfully for Brazil, France, Indonesia and the United Kingdom (Bretz, 2016; Solagro 2016; Vergara et al., 2016; Harwatt and Hayek 2019; Schmidt-Traub et al. 2019)
Step Three
Finally, policymakers need to design economic policies and structural reforms that can transform food systems to meet their country’s development and environmental goals. These are the actual policy levers that change food production and consumption. Regrettably, although today we understand how to produce and eat food for the well-being of people and the planet (Step One), and these precepts are starting to be investigated more pragmatically in some countries (Step Two), the design of economic policies to make a food transformation happen is much sketchier. Globally, only a handful of countries have announced plans to earmark modest amounts of public investment and changes in regulations or green food production and consumption. Elsewhere, reforms to promote food sustainability and health continue to be sidelined to a bilateral debate between agriculture ministries, non-government organizations and the few large corporations that dominate the sector (Andersen and Kuhn 2014).
And yet macroeconomic policy is ideally suited to improve food systems. “Green” fiscal, trade and financial policies, as well as structural reform measures used successfully to spur green transitions in other markets, such as energy, can be deployed in food markets to arrive at more sustainable production and healthier diets and reap the ensuing economic, social and planetary gains. The route to food system reform via well-targeted economic measures is uphill but far from impossible as food markets everywhere seem ready to embrace change.
Promising trends toward greater agri-food sustainability are emerging independently, including a global acceleration in land and sea used for nonconventional, regenerative farming, a shift away among Millennials and Generation Z members from animal-based protein, and technological advancements in restorative methods of agricultural production and regenerative ocean farming. These trends are accompanied by parallel, self-directed shifts in financing, which is slowly but relentlessly becoming more engaged in funding “green,” sustainable agri-food production and consumption solutions (Batini 2019c). Novel investment trends, which largely respond to emergent demand trends, include plant-based investing, alternative protein investing and agricultural technology venture capital investing. They also include a growing class of green and sustainable bond investing that is no longer limited to green projects in the energy realm, but increasingly incorporates a focus on land use. Although the potential benefits of making global food systems sustainable are enormous, not all of them can be achieved through a business-as-usual approach. In fact, current trends in global investment do not yet reflect the potential for disruption in demand-side agri-food innovations – innovations that target and affect consumers. The lower levels of investment in food systems are due in great part to the complexity of the sector. Fragmented rural markets, poor infrastructure, high regulatory burdens and other factors raise costs, while
Economic policy levers, as well as revenues are constrained by customers’ limited ability and willingness to pay. In addition, much of the food systems’ efforts by businesses, organizations and startup activity is concentrated in developed countries and on improving the production landscape, indicating consumers, can also both the risk of unequal access to new solutions and the opportunities for help cut the amount scaling in developing countries and in of food that goes demand-side innovations. Coordinated efforts by policymakers, investors, to waste. educators and others to accelerate a transformation of food systems in all regions can overcome those obstacles. To green our food supply, science shows that at a global level, we need to halve animal-based food production, replacing it with plant-based production, and shift away from conventional farming and fishing to regenerative farming. This can be achieved by raising taxes on intensive animal farms and farms growing crops destined for animal use, cutting subsidies to these operations and redirecting subsidies to sustainable farms just as carbon taxes are being proposed and raised to shift away from fossil fuels toward sustainable energy sources. Reforms to make land cheaper for regenerative farmers or to limit land available for conventional farming can complement these measures, alongside labour market reforms promoting regenerative agro-fishing jobs and the setup of enterprises involved in small agro-business. Other measures include public investment in research and innovation and public sponsoring of food industry initiatives aimed at promoting healthy food. These policies would mostly interest developed and large emerging market economies, which are
the world’s top suppliers of meat and dairy, as well as the main exporters of key food commodities such as grains, sugar and rice. In these markets, 98 percent of production is industrial, highly concentrated all along the supply chains and heavily subsidized.
Greening agri-food production in less industrialized countries indicates that the challenges are great, but the opportunities exist. In some countries, regenerative farming is timidly but successfully emerging as an approach to increase income while supporting sustainability. Affordable sun-powered irrigation systems are gradually empowering farmers to take charge of their crops even during droughts, and producers are experimenting with combinations of agriculture and aquaculture to create more productive and sustainable food systems. Policymakers in those countries need to consider public health and environmental outcomes along with production goals when determining which crops and production systems receive support through research, extension and policy. Everywhere, policies should sustain old and novel sustainable farming practices that include polycultural small farming, urban vertical farming, regenerative ocean farming and alternative-protein farming.
Economic policy levers, as well as efforts by businesses, organizations and consumers, can also help cut the amount of food that goes to waste. Reducing this waste, which is responsible for almost one-tenth of global greenhouse gas emissions, would conserve natural resources, create economic opportunity and feed the hungry. This important goal is more challenging than expected because food is wasted for different reasons in different places. In low- and middle-income countries, food waste happens largely within the supply chain, whereas in wealthier countries it occurs at the consumer level. At the same time, not all interventions to reduce food waste are equally effective or justifiable from an environmental, nutrition or economic point of view. Yet cutting food waste is one of the lowest-hanging fruits in transforming food systems, and country cases indicate that many policies can make a dent in the amount of food that is wasted. In developing countries, strategies include public investment in weather systems to increase farming accuracy, training in quality standards and storage, removal of infrastructure constraints and investments in cooling systems, refrigeration, improved storage and roads to get perishable food onto the market faster. In developed countries, policies include education to foster a no-waste culture, portion sizing, food banks and regulation for restaurants and grocery stores.
Alongside efficient use of all food and demand for sustainable food, small-scale regenerative agriculture is the backbone of global food security. And of course, wildlifefriendly farming both on land and at sea provides crucial ecosystem services. Equally important for climate mitigation, however, is the ability of forests, other undeveloped lands and our oceans to absorb greenhouse gases, keeping them out of the atmosphere. Using less land to support animal agriculture is key not just to carbon sequestration but to protecting the biological diversity that is necessary for food production. A barrage of economic policies and regulations can be used to incentivize private entities to engage in conservation efforts. Fiscal policies and structural reforms at the national and international level are well suited to ensure conservation of land, forests and seas. Indeed, success stories show remarkable benefits for the economy and the environment. Mapping land and seas to account for natural capital is essential to successful conservation efforts, and innovative techniques are now available to do this accurately and globally. Greening agri-food production in less Conclusions The IPCC’s 2019 report indicates that industrialized countries indicates by 2050, reforms in agriculture could mitigate up to a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and dietary changes that the challenges are great, but alone could reduce emissions by the amount currently emitted each year by the United States and India. Eliminating the opportunities food waste could cut another 8–10 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. exist. Shifting production and consumption toward plant-based foods would also halt deforestation and enable conservation of critical ecosystems. Beyond securing our planet’s habitability and biological richness, the wins for current and future generations would be vast. The food we eat would be more nutritious, more varied, safer, more humanely raised and more affordable. We would live longer and healthier lives. Savings from lower healthcare costs – one of the top expenditures for governments and households – could stabilize global finances. Labour productivity would rise with fewer work years lost because of ill health, disability or early death. Critical progress would be made in eradicating world hunger, income inequality and social immobility, averting mass migration due to climate change. All in all, the promise of reforming our food systems is too great to be overlooked. To grab it, though, governments will need to act quickly and with conviction. This book shows them the way. From The Economics of Sustainable Food edited by Nicoletta Batini. Copyright © 2021 Nicoletta Batini. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.
World’s first pizza subscription service
Toronto-based General Assembly has launched the world’s first pizza subscription service. The game-changing club aims to take a bite out of the competition by delivering subscribers stacks of four, six, eight and 10 frozen pizzas every month. A stack of the 10-in. pies has a tidy freezer footprint, lasts up to 60 days and is perfect for meal planning or spontaneous convection. Chef-crafted, featuring premium ingredients and 100 percent naturally leavened dough, these pizzas are made without preservatives, additives or commercial yeast. gapizza.com
Top-selling plant-based JUST Egg arrives in Canada
Eat Just has begun to distribute a locally made, toaster-ready, folded version of its plant-based egg in Canadian grocery stores. “With millions of Canadians embracing plant-based proteins for healthier, more sustainable diets, there’s no better time to launch our folded product here,” says CEO Josh Tetrick. JUST Egg is cholesterol free and has more protein than many animal proteins (13g per serving). It is Non-GMO Project verified, egg-free, dairy-free, has no artificial flavours and its ingredients use less water, have a smaller carbon footprint and use less land than conventional animal sources. The key ingredient is protein from the mung bean. ju.st
Reducing the ecological footprint of bottled natural products
Wampole is now offering its natural products and nutritional supplements in bottles made from 100 percent recycled materials to reduce its ecological footprint while promoting local sourcing and a greener lifestyle. With the gradual introduction of these new bottles to the market, Wampole is aiming to produce 30 percent of its packaging made from recycled materials by the end of 2021. The new bottles are also manufactured at Wampole’s facilities in Quebec. “We offer products that help maintain the health of consumers, which is intimately linked to the health of our planet,” explains Wampole’s General Manager, Louis-Philip Vermeersch. wampole.ca
Which chocolate, and why?
Along with flavour, packaging and marketing have a considerable influence on consumers’ chocolate choices. Last year, food scientists in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences released one of the first studies to investigate desirable attributes of chocolate bars. The study, published in PLOS ONE, included looking at consumers’ perceptions of “bean-to-bar” craft chocolate, made by smaller companies. Lead researcher Allison Brown noted, “The U.S. craft chocolate market is estimated to be worth $100 million and growing.” As part of the Penn State study, participants tasted five chocolate bars in three categories: mainstream (Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar), premium (a Lindt Cocoa Dark Chocolate Bar, a Green and Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate Bar, and an Endangered Species Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt and Almonds), and craft (Dandelion Chocolate 70% Ambanja, Madagascar).
Participants gave their opinions on flavour, packaging, sustainability labels and other aspects that they found to be appealing and unappealing. Overall, participants responded favourably to every sample because, as Brown pointed out, “It’s hard to make chocolate undesirable.” Almost all consumers found the craft chocolate sample to be novel and exciting, likening it to coffee and wine in terms of flavour and packaging elements. They were wowed by the product’s intricate label design and thick gold foil, with one consumer saying it was “like getting a golden ticket from Willy Wonka.” Products with higher price tags – and those available only at specialty stores or online – also were deemed to be top notch. The Endangered Species bar was a hit because its label indicates that proceeds support wildlife conservation. “Participants viewed it as a guilt-free indulgence,” Brown said.
Chocolatier making all products sustainable
Quebec-based chocolate maker Chocolats Favoris now uses sustainable cocoa to make the majority of its chocolate products, and by 2023, the company will be using 100 percent sustainable cocoa for all products, partnering with the Cocoa Horizons Foundation. Cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Brazil provide the raw goods for products at the company’s 52 chocolate shops in Canada; online orders can be shipped countrywide. chocolatsfavoris.com
Guilt-free chocolate via DNA testing
By some estimates, more than two million children work in the African chocolate industry. Researchers from the University of Bath, University of the West of England and Surrey Business School have developed an affordable DNA test that can verify slave-free, humane production techniques by tracing the origins of a chocolate bar. After isolating the DNA biomarkers at specific farms, the cocoa biomarkers can be detected in the final products and matched to a database of suppliers. Current certification methods are limited due to the mixing of raw materials early in the supply chain.
“This has the potential to revolutionize sustainability in a market rife with environmental destruction and human misery in that firms will now be able to buy from a specific set of known farms which have approved labour and environmental standards and to prove that their chocolate is made with that cocoa,” said Michael Rogerson, researcher at the University of Bath School of Management. A pilot study proved the method, but industry engagement is now required to implement the system at scale.
Breakfast of champions
Researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital collaborated with investigators at the University of Murcia in Spain to study the impact of eating chocolate. They discovered that when postmenopausal women eat a concentrated amount of chocolate in the morning, it may help burn body fat and decrease blood sugar levels. Consuming 100g of chocolate in the morning (within one hour of waking) or evening (within one hour of bedtime), the 19 women in the study did not gain weight despite increasing caloric intake. Evening chocolate intake was noted to alter next-morning resting and exercise metabolism.
Next step: Lab-grown chocolate
A team of biotechnologists and food technologists at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) discovered a process to develop lab-grown chocolate from cocoa bean scrapings. Grown in a bioreactor, the substance is incubated over several weeks in complete darkness, then mixed with a suspension culture. The end product was taste tested to verify its similarity to the “real” thing.
RISE OF THE ROBOTS
Next-generation tech is tackling some of Canada’s greatest challenges in the agri-food sector
By Jana Manolakos
LASTyear, people on Toronto streets were startled by “Geoffrey,” a small pink robot, as it quietly rolled past them on the sidewalk. Beside the fact that Geoffrey is undoubtedly one of the world’s cutest restaurant delivery bots, it’s also symbolic of a dramatic surge in robotics and automation throughout the Canadian food supply chain.
From precision farming to automated food distribution centres – and even, Geoffrey the delivery bot – Canada’s food sector finds itself in a rapidly evolving robotic age, where cutting-edge technology is changing the game for production, processing and distribution.
Over the last decade, an influx of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and 5G, robots and automation have reached new degrees of sophistication, becoming faster, more reliable and secure – far beyond what the fathers of robotics, George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, envisioned in 1959 when they introduced Unimate, the world’s first industrial robot.
These smarter-than-ever machines come in different shapes, with a range of functionalities, mobilities, dexterity and cost, from robotic process automation to drones with powerful image- and data-capturing capabilities. Increasing numbers use artificial intelligence to recognize and learn from their surroundings and make decisions independently.
A June 2020 agribusiness market study by Calgary Economic Development suggests that the global agricultural technology market is growing exponentially, and is expected to reach US$729.5 billion by 2023. Factoring prominently in this growth is the adoption of precision farming, which uses technological innovations like GPS, drones, sensors and soilsampling robots to help farmers make better decisions and grow crops more efficiently.
According to Alberta Innovates, the province’s largest research and innovation agency, “at the core of agriculture’s technological future is the concept of the smart farm, where sensors, automated equipment, agricultural drones and other high-tech machinery and software applications are all connected, giving farmers a full, real-time picture of what’s happening with crops, from planting to harvest.”
In the food, beverage and meat processing sector, these numbers are even more dramatic, with an expected growth to US$4.1 trillion by 2024. This is particularly relevant in Canada, where the sector contributes $28.5 billion to the national GDP, generating over $112 billion in production value as the second-largest manufacturing industry.
Robots to the rescue as Canada faces farm labour shortages
Despite the global demand for Canadian food products – Canada is the fifth-largest agricultural exporter in the world – the sector is grappling with a significant labour shortage in the coming years. Add to that the need to feed an exploding global population, and it’s no wonder that many in the agri-food industry are counting on robots to come to the rescue.
According to Hussam Haroun, director of automation for Ontario-based Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, “With automation, we can solve the labour shortage problem, while also bringing a new generation of workers into the industry by being able to offer people challenging jobs as engineers, technicians and system operators.”
An RBC report, Farmer 4.0, predicts that by 2030, Canada’s agricultural sector could be facing a shortage of 123,000 workers. Each year, 600 fewer young people are pursuing agricultural careers. The shortage is due to a combination of increasing production and a rising number of retiring individuals. By 2025, one in four farmers will be 65 or older, with 110,000 expected to retire in the coming decade, and experts say that’s putting pressure on the cost of labour. In horticulture, labour represents 40 to 60 percent of production costs for growers.
To meet increased demand, farmers are looking to automation and robotics, technologies like selfdriving tractors, automated cultivators and robotic harvesters. For example, Vineland is working on automated harvesting of fruits and vegetables, a finicky process that requires artificial intelligence to help the machine identify the fruit on the plant, determine if it’s ripe and pick it without bruising.
Transforming Canadian farms into high-tech operations
On the leading edge of precision agriculture in Canada, the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network (CAAIN) brings agri-food companies together with tech companies to boost farm productivity, while keeping the food supply safe. Launched in 2019, the non-profit is funded by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.
Dr. Cornelia Kreplin, executive director of Alberta Innovates and a CAAIN advisor, says, “We have a responsibility to help feed the 10 billion people we expect to be on this planet by 2050. To do that, we will need to increase agricultural production by between 50 and 70 percent from current levels.” That’s where precision farming can help.
Kreplin believes the only way forward is to increase the productivity and efficiency of agri-food companies by applying new technological solutions, including artificial intelligence, automation, advanced sensor technologies, hyperspectral imaging and blockchain applications.
Hyperspectral imaging wins CAAIN funding
Last October, CAAIN issued a $15-million call for project proposals focused on automation and digital technology that advance the agri-food sector. This May, the first of eight winners was announced. Quebec-based MatrixSpec Solutions, which specializes in hyperspectral imaging in the food processing industry, will receive a portion of the funds for its high-tech, non-invasive approach to identifying chicken egg genders and fertility. Over the next three years, the funding will cover almost half of MatrixSpec’s $2.8-million Optimizing Hyper-Eye initiative, which aims to help hatcheries produce female-only eggs, avoiding the cost of culling male chicks
– a practice that has raised animal welfare concerns in the past. Project partners include the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre and Egg Farmers of Ontario.
“Our innovation is world-leading and important for three principal reasons,” explains MatrixSpec founder and CEO, Dr. Michael Ngadi. “First, hatcheries must devote significant resources to the gender identification of day-old hatchlings. Second, existing methods of pre-incubated egg gender identification are invasive. Ours is not, which offers significant advantages. Finally – and this is very exciting – using our hyperspectral imaging tool to identify in ovum gender and fertility is only the beginning. This technology may well provide solutions to other agri-food challenges.” The technology has proven to be more than 90 percent accurate, and the company will use the additional funding to work toward scaling up for industrial application.
Cheaper, smarter, more powerful robots
A 2017 McKinsey report suggests that cheaper, more capable and more flexible technologies are accelerating the growth of fully automated production facilities, as a counterpoint to the rising cost of labour. From increased production outputs to improved quality and consistency, there are numerous reasons why the agri-food industry is rapidly adopting these technologies.
Agri-bots are no longer as cost prohibitive, with prices dropping significantly in the last 30 years, a factor in their rapid adoption. For example, Saskatchewan-based Dot Technology Corp. introduced Canada’s first autonomous power platform, a self-driving, AI-powered vehicle with a range of attachments like seeders, sprayers or a harvester cart. At a cost of US$260,000, the all-purpose robotic machine is cheaper than high-end traditional tractor models with ticket prices that can top US$500,000. The company says its platform helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and leads to savings on fuel, labour and equipment capital costs.
“The introduction of autonomous functionality has presented many opportunities for us to continue to develop our technology, and we are pleased with both the number of acres we’ve put on the machines and the amount we’ve learned over the course of this process,” says Norbert Beaujot, who founded Dot Technology Corp.
Interconnectivity is the name of the game in intelligent automation
Interconnectivity, like IoT and G5, is disrupting agri-tech and reshaping how autonomous robots and drones communicate with other machines and learn. It’s helping reduce costs, offset labour shortages, increase worker productivity, reduce errors, improve inventory and optimize picking, sorting and storing times. Geoffrey is undoubtedly one of the world’s cutest restaurant delivery bots. It’s also symbolic of a dramatic surge in robotics and automation throughout the Canadian food supply chain.
Late last year, Telus launched Telus Agriculture, a new business unit dedicated to providing innovative solutions to support the agriculture industry with connected technology, which the Canadian Federation of Agriculture says is essential to precision agriculture.
At the launch of the new division, Telus president and CEO Darren Entwistle said by digitizing the entire value chain and linking these technologies together for the first time, Telus Agriculture would facilitate a secure exchange of information to allow farmers and ranchers, agri-business organizations, the agri-food industry and consumers to make smarter decisions.
Rogers Telecommunications isn’t far behind, with clients like Metos Canada, delivering IoT-based digital technologies that send information to the farmer’s mobile and desktop from the fields every five minutes and allowing for remote field monitoring, weather monitoring and forecasting, water management, disease modeling, insect monitoring and nutrition management.
Cargill brings facial recognition capability to Canadian meat farms
From automated milking barns to hog sorting robots, new technology can provide a clearer picture of animal health and well-being. This spring Cargill, one of Canada’s largest processors of beef, poultry and oilseed, teamed up with Dublin-based machine vision company Cainthus to introduce facial recognition technology to dairy farms. The software uses predictive imaging to identify individual animals based on hide patterns and facial recognition, and tracks key data such as food and water intake, heat detection and behaviour patterns. The software then delivers analytics to inform decisions on milk production, reproduction management and overall animal health.
David Hunt, president and co-founder of Cainthus, explains, “Technology will truly help farmers succeed. We think this partnership will be a gamechanger for farmers because it will allow them to efficiently scale their business.”
Food and beverage processing leads demand for robots
According to the International Federation of Robotics, a global industry hub, the food and beverage processing sector is the second-largest manufacturing market for robotics in Canada, just after the automotive industry. Spurred on by the new norms of the pandemic, this trend shows no sign of stopping, especially in the pick-and-place, packaging and palletizing space.
While food processors generally have been slow on adopting automation – especially small and medium enterprises – according to a report by the Canadian government, that’s changing. The report suggests that “to remain competitive in an increasingly global market for food and beverage processed products, firms are likely to consider new avenues to manage input cost, productivity, efficiency and the changing characteristics of demand. Automation and robotics can help address some of the challenges faced by these processing firms.”
ABB Robotics
Headquartered in Switzerland, this company employs more than 11,000 people in 53 countries. ABB’s robots are flexible, fast and adaptable – even when it comes to strict hygienic demands. ABB robots are designed and built to suit all aspects of different processes within food and beverage industries to increase productivity and optimize the end product.
INNO-3B
The Quebec-based innovator specializes in automated vertical farming equipment, such as a tray extractor that eliminates the need for going around the farm by fetching trays and bringing them straight to a centralized workstation, all from the touch of a screen. This feature greatly facilitates the way humans interact with the crops while maximizing production space, but it is also designed for compatibility with a fully automated harvesting system.
AIS
Vancouver-based AIS develops mobile agricultural robots. Among these, its autonomous mobile robot uses a set of sensors to observe the surrounding environment. These sensors enable the robot to either autonomously make decisions about its behaviour or to pass the information to an operator. The second option allows an operator to control the robot remotely. The AIS IoT platform helps the robots learn from each other and, as a result, work collectively.
Raven Industries
OMNiDRIVE is an easy-to-integrate aftermarket system that can be installed on several popular tractor models, allowing the farmer to monitor and operate a driverless tractor from the cab of the harvester; the harvester can offload on-the-go in the field, then return the tractor to a predetermined unloading area.
Propack
Based in Beamsville, Ontario, Propack Processing and Packaging Systems Inc. is a manufacturer and supplier of automated packaging machinery, leading the way in robotics and innovation in the packaging industry. Since 1996, Propack has been designing custom pick-and-place packaging systems for a variety of markets and applications. Their systems can handle cartons or trays at high rates of speed for maximized efficiency.
Jantz Canada
Located in Grimsby, Ontario, this systems solution provider and machinery integrator offers high-quality machinery, conveyor systems and robotics for the food industry, such as its robotic bag palletizer, which can accommodate different pallet patterns and product types and handle up to four different SKUs simultaneously.
Opus Automation
This engineering manufacturing company specializes in robotic and automated solutions. In addition to offering palletizing, case packing and pick-and-place, the company sells machine tending robotics. Industrial robots are utilized to pick product from a supply position, transport the product to a machine, position it and then interact with the machine. Opus Automation’s customized end-of-arm tool designs allow the handling of parts as small as a pin or as large as a refrigerator, in a wide range of positions and orientations with precision.
Candrone
This robotics consultancy specializes in aerial and groundbased solutions serving a range of industries, including agriculture. The DJI Agras MG-1S or T-16 is an octocopter designed for precision variable-rate application of liquid pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides, for a high degree of efficiency and manageability.
A new state-of-the-art automated distribution centre scheduled to open in 2023 is the latest to enter the Canadian food supply chain. Quebec-based Groupe Robert, which owns and operates more than 40 distribution centres, recently announced plans to build a fully automated distribution centre in Varennes. The new facility adds to Groupe Robert’s Boucherville agri-food complexes and is designed to meet the food industry’s growing demand for refrigerated and frozen goods.
The total investment of $150 million includes $40 million provided by the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and a $15 million loan from the Government of Quebec. At a height of 150 feet, the new centre will have the storage capacity for 60,000 pallets: 30,000 for fresh products and 30,000 for frozen products. A speedy automated system allows trailers to be unloaded in only a few minutes. Energy efficient with a low carbon footprint, the centre’s heat recovery system reuses heat generated by the refrigeration equipment as part of its climate control system. Solar panels and a rainwater collection system will be used for washing trailers. centre also includes a five-aisle-high bay warehouse with 12,500 pallet locations and an automated storage and retrieval system with 118,800 tray locations. Innovative conveyor system elements, as well as 18 high-speed stacker cranes – developed and manufactured by Witron’s subsidiary, FAS – keep the system operational even at a temperature of -28°C.
Metro invests $800 million into new automated distribution centres
Metro, a leading food and pharmacy retailer in Canada with over $16 billion in annual sales and over 90,000 employees, recently opened the first of three semi-automated distribution centres in Ontario and Quebec. It’s part of a multi-year, $800 million investment.
Working with German storage and logistics expert, Witron, Metro began construction of its first centre in 2019. Located in Toronto, the 700,000-sq.ft. structure includes a fresh foods facility and a frozen foods facility, both with state-ofthe-art technology to provide improved product assortment, freshness and selection accuracy for Metro’s store network. The Toronto warehouse supplies more than 250 stores in the province of Ontario with an assortment of 3,600 different frozen products.
The new automated system includes nine automated palletizers and a case picking system. The machines are able to pick over 112,000 cases, more than 100 full pallets, for shipment to Metro stores on a peak day. The distribution Sobeys pairs its automated warehouse with home delivery
Sobeys took its Vaughan, Ontario, distribution centre to a new level last year by opening a fully automated Customer Fulfillment Centre. Timing couldn’t have been more perfect as the world was grappling with a global pandemic that was driving stay-at-home protocols and online grocery sales.
The 500,000-sq.ft. automated warehouse opened in 2009, costing $150 million. With ceilings that soar to 70 feet, the warehouse hums with machines that save the company 30 to 40 percent in labour costs. Space at the Vaughan facility is optimized through Witron’s automated case picking and palletizing system, which stacks pallets with enough precision to enable eight to 10 percent more products on each pallet.
Faced with steeply growing competition, Sobeys decided to launch Voilà by investing $100 million in new technology and a platform created by Ocado Group, a U.K. technology-led global software and robotics company. Ocado’s technology fills orders at the Vaughan centre, using robots to assemble the orders that staff deliver to customers.
Sarah Joyce, senior vice president of commerce, explains, “Because Voilà delivers customers’ orders directly from an automated warehouse, we have tremendous control over the freshness and quality of our products and the reliability of our deliveries.”
A second centre is currently being built in Montreal to bring Voilà par IGA to major cities in the province of Quebec, as well as Ottawa.
Geoffrey, Canada’s cutest delivery bot
Last year, Tiny Mile, a startup based in Toronto, launched an innovative way to deliver food to consumers. They developed a fleet of robots that provide on-demand delivery in Canada. The Geoffrey robot – named after Geoffrey Hinton, one of the “godfathers of machine learning” – weighs 10 pounds and can carry up to six pounds in its locked trunk, or basically the equivalent of an $80 takeout order. Moving along sidewalks at a top speed of six km/hr – roughly the same pace of an easy jog – the tiny pink robot is able to deliver orders within a two-km radius from the source restaurant, powered by a 12hour battery. Restauranteurs show Geoffrey a custom order number, which triggers the robot to open its lid so the food order can be loaded. Five onboard cameras give the remote pilot a wide, 220-degree view, equipped with a zoom lens to read addresses.
The autonomous delivery robot market is expected to reach a value of US$3.82 million by 2026.
E-commerce in Pandemic Times
A runaway train, or a leisurely ride into profitability?
By Jana Manolakos
Fuelled by the pandemic, e-commerce has exploded onto the Canadian food industry. Social distancing, stay-athome protocols and restaurant closures drove consumers to shop for their food online, and triggered unprecedented growth in virtual grocery stores and unique direct-toconsumer strategies – from boxed meals like Hello Fresh and Pepsi’s bundled pantry and snack shops, to home delivered groceries and artisanal foods. The phenomenon shows no sign of stopping, carving out a starring role for e-commerce in Canada’s food landscape.
A lead authority in the Canadian food industry and senior director of Dalhousie’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois says that even this far into the pandemic, the food industry is struggling to predict what people will want, how they will live, where they will eat and what they will eat. “We still don’t know what the market will actually look like, which is both scary and exciting at the same time,” he explains. “There’s a great deal of speculation how the industry will emerge at the other end of the pandemic.”
Among the churning, however, major players are betting on e-commerce. According to a report released by Charlebois’ lab last year, an estimated $12 billion will be invested by Canada’s food industry players into online interface services for the next five years – much of it triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Continued growth is a sure thing if you consider how shopping behaviours have changed. According to the 2021 Canada’s Food Price Report, one-quarter of Canadian shoppers are currently, or are strongly considering, ordering groceries online for delivery. Of these shoppers, 86 percent would like their groceries delivered directly to their homes. Charlebois, who led the project, estimates that over the last six months, 4.2 million more Canadians are ordering food online at least once a week than before the pandemic.
So what foods do Canadians buy online, and why do they buy them? A survey of 7,000 Canadians, conducted by the Agra-Food Analytics Lab, found that fast food was the most popular online purchase (33.1 percent), followed by fruits and vegetables (22.0 percent), dairy products (21.5 percent) and baked goods (20.6 percent). A smaller number (8.7 percent) purchased alcoholic beverages online in the last six months. While it came as no surprise that convenience was a major factor in online purchases, concerns over COVID-19 and mandatory selfisolation also led to more Canadians ordering online.
Lacking faith in Canada’s food supply chain
During the pandemic, what took Charlebois aback was how people lost trust in the food supply chain. “A great number of people were concerned about food access, with reports of shortages. That, to me, was just surprising,” he says, “because I’ve always believed that Canada was well-resourced. The food industry is quite resilient and able to serve the market well. I was not ready to see the number of Canadians doubting our industry’s capacity to deliver.”
What stands out for Charlebois is that until the pandemic, Canadians were not concerned so much over where and how their food arrived on store shelves – they were more concerned over whether it was safe to eat. “Before the pandemic, a lot of people were wondering how food supply chains can become more transparent, but with COVID, I think it got people to try to better understand how food supply chains actually work,” he explains.
Our relationship with food has changed
Along with working from home, more people are spending time in the kitchen. “As soon as you do that, your relationship with food completely changes,” Charlebois notes.
Last summer, a study released by the University of Guelph looked at the impact of COVID-19 on health behaviour, stress, financial and food security among middle- to highincome Canadian families with young children. It found that 60 percent of Canadians reported making more meals from scratch, 70 percent spent more time cooking, 55 percent ate more meals with children and 50 percent involved their children in meal preparation more often. Participants also reported changes in eating behaviours like eating more food overall, eating more snack food and eating less fast food or takeout.
There also has been considerable growth in the consumer market for fresh delivered meal kits in 2021, such as HelloFresh, Chef’s Plate and GoodFood. Along with lockdowns, this has been a hard hit on the restaurant industry, explains Charlebois. “There’s been a huge shift away from the food service industry, with restaurants suffering the greatest hit from the pandemic. Before the pandemic, 35 percent of our money for food was spent on food consumed outside the home. It went down to nine percent at the beginning of the pandemic. Now we’re up to about 24 percent. That represents billions and billions of dollars not spent in restaurants.” To survive, some restaurants chose to partner with online delivery apps, like Uber Eats, Door Dash and SkipTheDishes.
Will restaurants bounce back after the pandemic? Charlebois believes it will take some time. “I don’t think it’s going to happen over the next couple of years. It’s going to take a while.”
Smaller grocers are determined not to be left behind
According to Mark Juhasz, research associate at Dalhousie’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab (also the author of the article on p.14), efforts to adapt to the new realities have significantly reshaped e-commerce. Businesses hoping to succeed in the sector will need to understand shoppers’ wants and overcome some challenges to meet their expectations. “Labour markets, products and consumer sentiments have changed how people are eating, and this requires important attention across the supply chain,” he says.
Juhasz points to Amazon, which responded to a surge in online purchases by allowing consumers to reserve a “virtual” spot in line during demand spikes when production runs low. He adds, “Pepsi launched direct-to-consumer platforms in 2020 to allow purchase bundling.”
But not all e-commerce newcomers have the infrastructure in place to deliver a world-class customer experience. It isn’t easy for smaller grocers who need to invest in new infrastructure, such as websites, inventory management, staffing and delivery capacity, to fulfil online orders. There’s also the spectre of ongoing consolidations in the Canadian grocery retail landscape, explains Juhasz. In March, Canada’s secondlargest grocery retailer, Empire, announced its purchase of a majority share in Longo’s and its Grocery Gateway e-commerce business. Empire operates Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, Farm Boy, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods and Voilà.
Around the same time, Empire announced it was working with Food, Health and Consumer Products of Canada on a proposed grocery code of practice designed to address unfairness in the market.
Juhasz notes that while large grocer consolidations can lead to improved customer experiences, at the same time, “there’s an upward pressure on costs for smaller grocers. The bigger companies can invest in advanced technology, but it puts pressure on smaller food companies to find digital platforms to help them keep up with these changes.”
An answer, he says, lies in banding together. For example, 2020 saw the creation of Best of Calgary Foods, a new owneroperated collaboration between 24 of the city’s chefs and food artisans. “Initially, members of the group tried to go it alone,” Juhasz explains, “with the associated third-party logistics and delivery costs, but they then combined forces under one banner, and now deliver bundles of products to customers.
“What is interesting about this is that they don’t necessarily have the volume or ability to list in large grocery chains. They found that selling to buyers as individuals was cost prohibitive. So, they combined forces and now have a suite of options consumers can buy if they want to buy from local artisans and producers. It’s a solution for smaller companies and allows them to deliver to people in the Calgary area using a direct-to-consumer business model, which is more feasible for these smaller companies. By teaming up, they have better economies of scale.”
Digitizing the Saturday morning farmers’ market
E-commerce also works for farmers who are looking to sell directly to consumers. The pandemic led to a surge in direct field-to-consumer online sales of boxed meats and produce, with some farms reporting up to 400 percent increases in sales. User-friendly e-commerce platforms like Local Line are making it easier to set up digital farmers’ markets.
But in the virtual world, the vibrancy and ambience of a bustling Saturday morning market is lost – presenting a hurdle for e-commerce, explains Juhasz. Researchers at the Agri-Food Analytics Lab found that when shopping online for groceries, Canadian consumers felt uncomfortable about purchasing food without seeing it first and had concerns over food quality. “Not being able to see their food before they buy it online means savvy grocers will need to improve their website presentations with detailed product descriptions and superior photographs.
“All of these brands across the sector need to be thinking about the e-commerce platform and how they represent themselves to consumers, whether it’s direct-to-consumer or online – more so now, as the pandemic has really accelerated the need.”
Timing of food delivery also was a concern that led retailers to rethink how they can get their products out quicker, notes Juhasz.
Rising food prices and the low-income consumer
With food prices expected to rise by five percent, well ahead of Canada’s inflation rate, Charlebois says, “Engaging in e-commerce will also put some pressure on food prices. Food affordability is going to be an issue.” For 43 percent of Canadians, price isn’t so critical, according to Canada’s Food Price Report. They’re able to pay extra for online food retail services, delivery services, meal kits and the fees many of them charge. The report cites apps like Instacart, an online grocery delivery service, which includes delivery fees, service fees and tip options. As grocers increasingly invest in e-commerce platforms, consumers also can expect to see fewer food bargains and discounting.
Juhasz explains that’s going to be hard for lower income earners, among whom “there is a sensitivity to the cost of service and delivery fees.” Research from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab found that delivery and service fees are a big barrier for many Canadians when using online services, with almost half not willing to pay any fee. Another consideration is those consumers who do not have online banking access or credit cards.
The e-commerce boom
Even before the pandemic, grocers were responding to consumer demand for convenience by launching online delivery services like Longo’s Grocery Gateway, which was Canada’s first in 2004. And while there was some interest in the Longo’s strategy, the real wakeup call for the industry came in 2017, according to Charlebois, when Amazon bought Whole Foods. But even after this, “most grocers really didn’t want to embrace e-commerce until COVID happened. COVID created a market that really needed e-commerce, and so grocers needed to adapt.”
The shift from food service to food retail also impacted food distributors. For example, surplus food initially intended for restaurants was redirected to retailers; foods were repackaged for food retail rather than food service; and there was reduced bulk demand.
“Right now, Sobeys is ahead of the curve with Voilà, and Walmart is trying to find its e-commerce footing. Walmart is deploying a very aggressive strategy along with Costco as well,” says Charlebois.
So how will e-commerce in the food industry change in the next decade? “It’s going to grow,” Charlebois predicts. “We don’t know to what extent, but it is going to grow because there are two things going on. There’s tremendous investment in e-commerce, for one. And secondly, I think that grocers are starting to better understand, or better appreciate, how to make money with e-commerce.”
With the data that’s out there, and the investments made by industry, Charlebois believes that even after the pandemic subsides, Canadians will continue to appreciate the convenience of shopping for their food online. Most likely, we can consider this a permanent part of the new normal.
FRYING OIL MONITOR ENSURES QUALITY
As cooking oil degrades, harmful peroxides are produced from the unsaturated fatty acids, not only spoiling the quality and flavour of food, but potentially leading to serious health issues for consumers. With Geneq’s new frying oil monitor, the ATAGO DOM-24, the quality and condition of degraded oil can be managed using quantitative, objective values to determine the right time to replace the oil. The DOM-24 easily measures oil degradation without any complicated setups, and no other equipment or preparation is needed. geneq.com
AI-BASED PROGRAM PREDICTS MARKET DEMAND
As a Nielsen Connected Partner, Fiddlehead pulls syndicated data directly from Nielsen, analyzes the data and generates downloadable reports. The Category Foresight Report is a fast-moving consumer goods retail report that identifies competitive blindspots, predicting competitor pricing and promotions. Using deep learning, predictions are made for every Universal Product Code manufactured in the food channel, in every Nielsen syndicated major market. The forecasts are made every week, between six and 12 months after purchase, allowing the customer time to adjust their tactics. Fiddlehead identifies future opportunity gaps, where there will be markets with low promotion and high demand. fiddlehead.io FOOD SAFETY TESTING SOLUTION FOR JUICE, SODAS AND MORE
The BACT/ALERT 3D rapid microbial detection system enables better productivity, faster product release and significant cost savings. Highly sensitive, it has been engineered for automated, objective and high-throughput microbial detection. The system’s versatility makes it customizable for almost any facility. The device uses three simple steps to detect a broad range of microorganisms using a proven, patented liquid-emulsion sensor to detect CO2 and other metabolites. biomerieux.ca
WEIGHING MEAT JUST BECAME EASIER
The new WS 910 weighing system from Handtmann guarantees accurate-to-the-gram weights in every packaging unit. It is particularly useful in the application areas of minced meat and in the production of formed products. The WS 910 weighing system with the SB 912 sorting conveyor offers a turnkey solution, integrated into a production line for process monitoring. The main functions include production control, monitoring and weight control, as well as ejecting under- or overweight portions after the forming and portioning process. The weighing system forms part of the Handtmann LineControl concept. handtmann.de
