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- The world's producers face an enormous challenge.
They have to increase food production to meet the needs
of the growing human population
and they need to reduce their impact on the planet
and they need to address the effects of climate change.
And climate change is almost certain
to make major parts of the world
that we currently rely on for food, unproductive.
It will make food harder and more expensive to produce.
Some people describe this as a perfect storm of problems.
Where the needs of the human population
are growing, the impact on the planet has to shrink
and the effects of climate change
mean the old ways of doing things
are becoming much, much harder.
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- Climate change is not making things easy,
but I have to have hope.
(fire crackling)
I have to believe that everybody's doing their part
and communities, farmers, industry, politicians,
we are all doing our part trying to build more
resilient and efficient systems.
Food systems that actually are efficient in terms
with our natural resources that respect cultural
and experience from farmers and the cultural knowledge
from Indigenous and Afro-descendants communities,
but also food systems
that produce enough food for everybody.
- The impact on food systems is going to be
around where, when and how we produce food.
Places will change.
The times of the year
that we're able to grow food is gonna change
and how we do it is gonna change,
as we go forward in the future.
- The future of food really depends
on ensuring that farmers across Canada and around the world
have the tools that they need
so that they truly can be the best stewards of the land.
Ensuring good yields, good production
and most importantly tools that will make them competitive
at a global level.
- My research focuses
in the area of controlled environment agriculture
which is anything from greenhouses to vertical farms.
It reduces the transportation distances,
because we're growing in urban centers
close to where the food's actually consumed
it substantially reduces the water
we need to grow the plants,
because we're in an enclosed environment
so we're not losing water to evaporation
and we also can eliminate the use of pesticides,
because again we're in an enclosed environment.
So we don't have the bugs and whatnot from outside.
So all these things allow us to grow food in a way
that will be less damaging to our climate
and help reduce all the factors
that are contributing to climate change.
For example, growing in Canada's north
or growing in desert regions or where it's too cold.
By developing indoor agriculture, we can grow year round,
which will allow us
to have a much more independent food system.
More particularly with the research we're doing in our lab.
We're doing all the research
on how to take the different plants that we eat
and grow them indoors.
My hope for my research in vertical farming
is that we can be growing highly nutritious, local food,
that's affordable for people to access
and that we can be growing that in all different climates,
all around the world.
- My research is on small grain millet crops.
I started working in a non-government organization
that worked with small farmers in Nepal.
These kind of crops demand less,
less fertilizers, chemicals,
it can tolerate low nutrient supply situations
and also the dry conditions.
Ontario, in this climate, when you harvest winter wheat
you still have more than two months of warm days
and that is not being utilized properly.
There must be short duration millet crop,
that can chip in after the winter wheat, until starts frost.
Crops could be bred to make it not only yield better
but also face drought.
There are a whole lot of crops that used to be grown
by Nepalese farmers, many Asian farmers, African farmers.
Now they are moving towards corn.
Realize that people still want to grow millet crops,
but they also need to improve the yield
to have better economic returns.
If we do not invest more on all those neglected crops,
we will lose them, they will disappear.
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- There are many great challenges for humanity these days
and one of the major ones is climate change.
One way of trying to mitigate that effect
is to base our food system on plants
and so that means growing plants not only for starch
as we have in the past, in the case of protein and corn,
but as well in terms of protein.
And we see the new world of lentils and chickpeas,
favas and lupins, which will provide the protein necessary
for the manufacturer of protein-rich foods.
One large effort that we have been working on
is the replacement of palm oil.
We started here for sustainability reasons.
Palm oil leads to the loss in biodiversity
in the tropical rainforests and as well we have this issue
of having to transport large amounts
of food materials across the ocean.
So we really wanted to find a solution to this problem
that did not require hydrogenation,
by which we can take certain liquid vegetable oils
and turn them into functional fats that can be used
in most of the applications that palm oil can be used for.
(light upbeat music)
- My research is looking at soil health
from the principle of building carbon.
The single most important function of soil
is the structure of soil organic matter.
The structure of the soil will increase the resilience
of agricultural production and will enhance the ability
of the soil to hold nutrients, to hold water,
and it'll also stabilize more carbon in the soil.
- We are going to have more extreme events
of drought and flooding.
What we need is a system that is resilient to that change
and there are a number of of ways to do that.
For example, crop diversification.
So using a crop rotation
that is more adapted to these extreme events.
(rain splashing)
If you drive through the countryside,
you will see greenery in the summer,
but then after harvest the fields are usually brown or bare.
During those shoulder seasons,
we can grow crops that are grown specifically
to feed the soil, called cover crops.
They add additional carbon that feeds the microbes
and then that cycle of nutrients and carbons in the soil.
They increase soil health in the long run
and with improved soil health.
We have an agricultural system
a cropping system that is more resilient to climate change.
- My research focus on having food systems
in remote areas in Colombia.
There are a lot of illicit economies,
because we don't have enough infrastructure.
There is insufficient capacities of skills.
There is not a government support.
We see young girls, young men, 13, 14 years old,
who are starting to crop coca.
They are located
in one of the most biodiversity countries in the world,
so what's going on?
We need to implement sustainable agri-food food systems
that provide jobs, nutritious food.
That provide economic incentives for them.
Food insecurity is not only about not having access to food.
It's also about food autonomy.
Where does my food come from?
Communities are importing food and it's really curious,
because it's like you have land
and you have water and soil to grow food.
What's happening?
- The future of food depends upon
finding collaborative solutions across the food value chain.
We think of food waste as one of those wicked problems.
Municipalities run their food waste programs really well.
Right now, a lot of us, we don't even really think about
where our waste goes.
So there are a lot of different reasons
why we have so much food waste.
When it comes to food insecurity, there's one main driver.
There's not enough income for people to buy the food
that they need.
It's income inadequacy.
We need to find different ways of distributing food
before it's been wasted.
While it's still healthy and nutritious.
We have done research with The SEED.
They're an amazing community organization.
One of the innovations that they've brought
to the food security issue is a sliding scale pricing model,
so this means that they sell food
to a diversity of consumers, but there are options
for people to pay less money if they're able to afford less.
- My current research project is about finding out
the different transmission routes
of avian influenza viruses
and how we can actually find different ways
to mitigate this transmission.
It would help to produce bettered chickens
and if you have better chickens, your economy goes up.
It will help global food safety and security concerns
and you will have a sustainable food system.
- The reality is that we are quite vulnerable
to a lot of emerging diseases.
Food security is tied very effectively
to our domestic animal species
and non-domestic animal species.
For example, African swine fever.
If African swine fever penetrates our system
it could have catastrophic consequences
for our production system.
It's critically important for us to have good systems
put in place for surveillance, for monitoring
and also good systems by security
to look after human health and animal health.
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- The future of food depends
upon digital agriculture technology usages.
This ranges from the use of SMS and call centers
to alert farmers about agronomic advices,
to higher end digitalization like automation and robotics
or the use of drones for precision advisories for farmers
to alert them on agronomic advice
or climate change information.
Or connect them to markets, give them market prices.
With digital tools we increase their access
to information in ways that can help them to adapt
to the changing conditions.
In these uncertain and complex times.
- It is important to help smallholder farmers
to become more sustainable, because they are the majority
in developing countries, in rural areas
and they are usually left behind.
It is not possible to think
about sustainability and food security without them.
- Research projects,
that I've done across the world,
we typically bring together smallholder farmers
and link them with markets
that might be wholesalers processors, retailers.
We get them to work together to collaborate
and in doing so they end up producing more food
with less waste at a higher price point
for all those members of the food supply chain.
- We are working for women to become leaders
in the transformation of polluting industries
into more sustainable and inclusive rural businesses.
By applying green technologies,
easy to apply in their own coffee farms,
women develop green skills
and apply sustainable production concepts.
(cash register beeping)
- We've all been to the grocery store,
where we've seen prices increase year on year.
We're seeing the impact of various climate events
impacting the supply of food.
We've seen COVID shutdowns impact our ability to get food.
We've seen conflicts increase the price of ingredients,
of fuel, fertilizer.
This is having a big impact on the way food is made
and the way it's moved to us
when we buy it at a grocery store.
- I feel it's very, very important
that people appreciate the importance
of producing good quality food, close to home
and that means making sure that our farmers
have opportunities to partner with industry,
to add value to what they grow in the fields.
- Businesses make food.
It's not people, it's people running businesses.
And the system is driven by output.
The food that it makes, but also by the profit
and the impact it has on stakeholders.
But those stakeholders include consumers, the environment,
the planet as a whole.
Canada can be a leader in the production,
manufacturing and marketing of sustainable food products.
- There are three ways
that Canada is going to lead the world
in sustainable food production.
First of all, we're going to be producers of food.
We'll make sure that that food
finds its way into the hands of people that need it.
- Canada has a lot of land
has an incredibly efficient agricultural production.
We have some of the best farmers, if you may, in the world
producing very large amounts of food
in a very economical fashion.
- Secondly, we're going to create new technologies
new processes, new ways of thinking
so that sustainability is embedded
within food systems and we can ship that thinking
that technology around the world
so that others can make use of it
just as we will use it here in Canada.
- And that's really important,
because food is not just the question of one country.
Food comes from everywhere and you have so many networks
so you need to collaborate.
- Student like me can take advantage
to help their home countries to better face
with the climate change and improve the production.
- I decided to come back to Colombia, because my dream
was to help to make better environmental projects
and during my PhD I think I learned a lot
and I was ready to go back and apply that knowledge.
(workers chatting)
- I hope that the network that I'm able to build here
can be leveraged to help them back in Africa.
- We're going to create the thought leaders of tomorrow.
The talent pool that is going to help lead us
through the challenges that we're going to have to address
in the future.
- Young people should be absolutely buoyed
and excited by the careers that they can pursue
in the agri-food sector.
- We are right now in the golden age of food science.
In all areas from crop science to food science,
to animal science, molecular biology,
in order to be fed into this transition.
- We are a species that has an unbelievable ability
to develop technologies, to work collaboratively together
to develop and co-develop effective solutions
to major food system problems.
And that while we should never take that adaptive capacity
for granted, we actually have a lot to be optimistic about.
- It's a huge task ahead of us,
but I think with the innovation
that we've seen in the sector,
I'm confident that we can achieve that,
so that agriculture will be punching above its weight,
in terms of what it delivers to society.
- It's important for us to pay attention to help all farmers
the risks to agriculture is not just being compounded
but it's getting more complex and uncertain.
We need to bring everybody on board,
because every single type of farmer
have their own contribution
to the global food security.
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