Canada’s Food Security Strategy Lacks Support for Farm Advisors

The numbers are staggering and for Canadian families painfully familiar. Over at the cereal aisle or the produce section the story has been one of sustained pressure. Canada has endured some of the highest food inflation rates in the G7, a stark reality for a nation with vast agricultural land. Beneath that sticker shock lies a concentrated market—five retailers control three-quarters of grocery sales—and a surprising import dependency. We bring in 88 percent of our fresh fruit and 72 percent of our vegetables leaving the entire system exposed to distant supply chain snarls and geopolitical tariffs.

In response the federal government this June launched Canada’s first National Food Security Strategy a decade-long $3-billion pledge. The targets are ambitious and data-driven: boost the share of healthy food produced domestically from 75 to 85 percent by 2032, double the value of greenhouse and indoor farming, and harness automation to cut labour and energy costs in those facilities. It’s a classic capital-intensive playbook—invest in technology infrastructure and production capacity. The logic seems sound on a spreadsheet. But in my years covering corporate strategy and market implementation I’ve learned a critical truth. The most elegant plan on paper falters without the human expertise to execute it on the ground.

Here lies the strategy’s blind spot one that threatens to undermine its entire multi-billion dollar premise. Nowhere in its many pages does it substantively address agricultural extension and advisory services. These are the agronomists the veterinarians the government specialists and the educators. They are the essential translators the ones who convert academic research complex regulations and shiny new technologies into practical profitable decisions for a farmer standing in a field or a barn. The strategy invests in the what but is largely silent on the who that will make it work.

This silence is particularly glaring when you look at the models Canada itself cites. The strategy praises the Netherlands for its “strong agricultural knowledge system” a world-renowned public-private nexus of innovation. It notes France’s connected networks of companies researchers and producers and Japan’s pairing of smart agriculture investment with comprehensive farmer training. As a recent analysis from the Agri-Food Economic Systems think tank pointed out these systems share a common thread: coordinated often publicly-anchored advisory services that ensure investments reach their full potential. Canada in contrast has spent decades dismantling its own such system.

The story of Canada’s farm advisors is a quiet saga of public retreat. For most of the 20th century provinces employed publicly funded extension agents—a trusted local source of unbiased advice. Since the 1990s that model has eroded replaced by a fragmented patchwork. Advice now comes from a constellation of private consultants input suppliers like seed and fertilizer companies commodity organizations and various non-profits. Research including work from the University of Guelph highlighted in recent policy discussions reveals the consequences. Farmers value personalized advice but often find what they receive is inconsistent duplicated or tinged with commercial bias. Access is inequitable; larger innovative farms attract the most support while small and mid-sized operations the backbone of rural communities are often left behind.

The contrast with the United States is instructive. South of the border a coast-to-coast extension system remains anchored in public land-grant universities providing a consistent research-based national framework. Canada has no analogous national plan no shared professional standards and crucially no research measuring the economic impact of advisory services on farm incomes. We have privatized the function without understanding the cost of its decline. As Dr. David Sparling an agri-food innovation expert at Ivey Business School often notes “Innovation adoption is a social process not just a technological one. Without trusted intermediaries adoption lags and ROI falls.”

Into this void farmers are turning to the same source we all do: the internet. Facebook groups YouTube tutorials and now AI chatbots have become first stops for diagnosing a crop disease formulating livestock feed or interpreting new regulations. Digital platforms offer speed and breadth but they introduce profound new risks. Misinformation about farming practices inputs and climate science proliferates online. When researchers at the University of Guelph tested popular AI chatbots on real Ontario livestock management questions the results were a concerning mix of useful guidance and critical errors. A 2023 report from the OECD on AI in agriculture warns of challenges like “conflicting predictions” and “inadequate preparedness for AI-related disruptions.” Encouraging technological adoption while leaving farmers to vet volatile digital information alone creates a glaring and avoidable vulnerability in our food security.

Closing this gap doesn’t require resurrecting the 1970s government model. It requires five pragmatic cost-effective steps that would multiply the return on every other dollar in the $3-billion strategy.

1. Federal provincial and territorial governments must use the upcoming 2028 negotiations for the next agricultural policy framework to establish common goals and quality standards for farm advice.
2. We need to train more advisors. Universities and colleges require targeted support to rebuild the pipelines that produce the specialists who can navigate climate-smart practices and precision ag-tech.
3. Canada should establish a national professional body for extension workers. Such an organization as advocated by groups like the Canadian Society of Extension would strengthen networks improve coordination and ensure frontline knowledge informs national policy.
4. Governments must invest in research to measure the impact of advisory services. We need hard evidence of the kind cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its own extension evaluations showing how advice improves profitability productivity and resilience.
5. We must help farmers and advisors navigate the digital world. This means developing standards for agricultural AI tools and funding digital literacy programs that equip the sector to identify and counter misinformation.

Next to the grand infrastructure promises these measures are modest in cost but exponential in potential payoff. New port terminals expansive greenhouses and innovation funds are vital physical assets. But they are inert without the flow of knowledge to animate them. A food security strategy that skips the step of empowering the people who must implement it is not just incomplete—it is building on shaky ground. The lesson from Wall Street to wheat fields is the same: strategy without execution is merely theory. For Canada’s food future we cannot afford to get the theory wrong.