Groceries, Gaslighting, Guelph
Agricultural policy discussions must decouple food security from commodity exports. Communications that intertwine the two goals do not reflect reality, stalling progress on critical topics.
This report lays out three examples of national discussions happening currently that are gaslighting the public. Maybe it’s deliberate, to protect incumbent stakeholders from acknowledging the need for change, or maybe it’s subconsciously a function of conflicted industry leaders and lobbyists stuck on decades-old messaging. The purpose of calling it out is to help break through the confusion towards a productive conversation about food policy.
The common theme that industrial agriculture is the solution to hunger runs throughout official communications, and it simply isn’t true.
Here’s where we see different aspects of this theme today in Canada:
Corporate sustainability marketing materials.
Debates over the cause of food price inflation.
The federal government’s ‘Guelph Statement.’
The first example to consider is the sponsored content created by the Globe & Mail’s advertising department for Nutrien. It tries to make the case that if only more fertilizers were applied to croplands, both hunger and environmental degradation around the world would be solved.
That is one opinion that anyone is free to hold. Other opinions based on climate science suggest that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from commercial fertilizer manufacturing and applications are the biggest polluter in agriculture. If the latter turns out to be right on this question, Nutrien’s social license will be eroded with potentially negative consequences for shareholders.
According to the Globe & Mail’s Media Group web page, their Content Studio offers the “…#1 reach to business decision makers… high income households… (and) high net worth Canadians.” It appears this piece is marketing to investors.
Where it gets concerning and also damaging to farmer morale, is when influencers in agriculture and industry organizations (that Nutrien is a member of) amplify this paid content as though it’s journalism. Gaslighting is a form of coercive control that causes people to question their own reality. In this case it is reinforcing outdated belief systems in communities that are already struggling to adapt to climate change.
A farmer catching a reference to this ‘Globe & Mail’ article on Twitter might think, ‘I know that all this fertilizer is killing my soil biology and turning the lakes green, but everyone says we need to feed the world, so what should I do? Use more or less?’
3 times, the article stated that Nutrien helps feed people in Canada and around the world, but it didn’t say how. Nor did three grocery-giant CEO’s appearing this week in front of a parliamentary committee studying the cause of food price inflation.
1 of the grocery CEO’s said to a reporter after, “Hopefully our opportunity to speak and answer questions today has been helpful not just in terms of satisfying the committee but also through media exposure, to help rebuild public trust.” So, using the media to gaslight the public was a key motivation of their appearance? Only one small mention was made by the CEO’s that grocery store price inflation could be slowing down ‘sometime soon’… during a time when about twice as many Canadian households as last year report struggling to afford enough food.
Along the way, food price inflation has had one positive impact on the agriculture and food economy, and that is to shift demand away from grocery retails to local farmers. Suddenly, small boutique grocery retails and specialty stores like butchers, bakeries, and fishmongers, are competitive with their big box neighbors, so shoppers can enjoy a more local food experience, without it always costing more.
Unfortunately, there is no data comparing food prices between large and small outlets, and it’s tricky due to pack size differences. Yet small store owners still price-check constantly, and they report needing to market to local customers that their prices aren’t more expensive. This message is not gaslighting - it’s earning market share via competitive prices.
The way to help feed people locally is to establish economic incentives for investments in short-chain food processing infrastructure, removing resellers and long distances. Based on the success of new projects like this underway across the regenerative movement, it is already working to diversify food systems and increase resiliency.
Simply put, the economics of food security are completely different than the economics of commodity exports driven by high-input agricultural production. But somehow this distinction continues to evade discussions among policy makers and large corporations in agriculture and food.
Consider Canada’s ‘Guelph Statement:’
“Canada is recognized as a world leader in sustainable agriculture and agri-food production and drives forward to 2028 from a solid foundation of regional strengths and diversity, as well as the strong leadership of the Provinces and Territories, in order to rise to the climate change challenge, to expand new markets and trade while meeting the expectations of consumers, and to feed Canadians and a growing global population.”
This statement - meant to inform federal, provincial, and territorial funding decisions - raises a few questions. First, based on what evidence are we to believe that Canada is a world leader in sustainable agriculture and agri-food? How would that marketing claim even be measured and validated?
If we aren’t starting off with a true statement about the metrics of this industry in the actual marketplace, who is ever going to agree on how to ‘drive forward to 2028?’
Not this group, that’s for sure. Here are the organizations named to form the Advisory Committee for Canada’s Sustainable Agriculture Strategy: Canadian Organic Growers, Egg Farmers of Canada, Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, Farmers for Climate Solutions, Canadian Canola Growers Association, Fertilizer Canada, Canadian Cattle Association, Fruit & Vegetable Growers of Canada, Canadian Pork Council, Grain Growers of Canada, Canadian Wildlife Federation, National Farmers Union, Canola Council of Canada, Nature United, Chicken Farmers of Canada, Pulse Canada, Dairy Farmers of Canada, Union de producteurs agricoles, Ducks Unlimited, and Soy Canada.
Nice people, all of them. Great intentions, for sure. But clearly there will be a lot of conflicting mandates around the table, making it awfully tough to foresee consensus and progress.
Furthermore, the Guelph Statement is asking the industry to “…rise to the climate change challenge, to expand new markets and trade while meeting the expectations of consumers, and to feed Canadians and a growing global population.” That’s a lot to tackle at once, making it hard to come up with a place to start.
How about this: recent history would seem to suggest that the climate challenge facing Canadian farms and food consumers centers around distribution and water management. Canada’s commodity export trade infrastructure is performing better than ever, but it too will need functioning water systems, so that grain fields continue to yield and livestock don’t drown.
Summary
It would be wonderful to see genuine concern from large corporations and government committees, and real work on solutions to end hunger. By now it should go without saying that ‘feeding a growing global population’ is a meaningless statement that discredits the source of any any agriculture-related document that contains it.
Lumping all consumers into one set of expectations creates the same limitations for market development as treating individual farms as commodities. Just because they grow/buy commodities doesn’t make the farms or the customers commodities themselves. The misguided initiatives covered here seem to stem from that popular falsehood in agriculture and food.
It is strange indeed that this industry clings so tightly to its commodity identity, when it’s getting kinda boring, and seeks only to value the lowest common denominator. Marketing agriculture and food is so much more fun when using new concepts to connect buyers and sellers on shared values and novel attributes.