Mapping Food Sustainability in Canada: Addressing Food Insecurity and Skills Pathing to the Agriculture Sector

Canadian agriculture is closely tied to the country’s prosperity and food security. While Canada is a major agricultural exporter, the sector is struggling to attract new and diverse talent. Many Indigenous Peoples and equity-deserving groups do not participate in the sector, and are food insecure, revealing significant gaps between agricultural output, sector participation, and equitable access to food. For instance, about 46% of Indigenous Peoples experience food insecurity, and Black households have about double the odds of white households to be food insecure. Simultaneously, urban food insecurity has surged with over 2 million Canadians now using food banks and related supports monthly.

Community food production through gardens and greenhouses has gained traction to address food insecurity, and offer skills pathing and sector visibility for agriculture and agrifood careers. These programs and community initiatives are essential in skills pathing and improving sector visibility for agriculture and agrifood careers. These programs can ensure food security, address sector barriers to participation, and improve technology adoption among Indigenous Peoples and equity-deserving groups across rural, urban, and remote environments. Nonetheless many of these programs are small in scale, lack formal skills training components or have limited connection to the wide agrifood industry.

While numerous programs exist, there is not a unifying understanding of program offerings, geographic, and demographic coverage and thus their contributions to the agriculture skills training ecosystem.

In this report, the authors mapped the current ecosystem of food sustainability initiatives to understand the current coverage of food sustainability programs in Canada. The ecosystem mapping exercise mapped 228 initiatives or programs. The report analyzed what training programs offer, if any, as well as the targeted interventions for Indigenous Peoples and equity-deserving groups.

• Food sustainability programs predominantly offered foundational skills programs (78% of initiatives) showcasing basic gardening and cultivation skills, with somewhat less focus on analytical skills training (e.g., operations management), and less than 50% providing technical training in advanced agricultural technologies (e.g., use of sensors or greenhouse technologies).
• Targeted programming for equity-deserving groups in food sustainability programs shows important but uneven patterns, with Indigenous Peoples in urban areas, rural women and immigrants and newcomers, and 2SLGBTQ+ people underserved relative to other equity-deserving groups.
• Food sustainability program offerings vary geographically, with Ontario hosting the largest share of initiatives, accounting for nearly 30% of programs, while Quebec and Alberta are underrepresented, despite the relative contribution of their population to the sector.
   

Canada needs to address growing food insecurity, improve agriculture and agri-food sector participation, and continue to offer skills pathing to more technologically-enabled farming operations.

The ecosystem mapping in this report highlights the wide range of initiatives that target food security and sustainability, many of which include skills training components. The authors found that many programs offer foundational training, though upskilling opportunities are limited. Additionally, where programs provide concerted support to Indigenous Peoples and equity-deserving groups, community definitions of healthy and sustainable food are not always included.

Food sustainability programs need to better target women, newcomers and indigenous Peoples and improve the visibility and use of agtech, digital tools, and technical specializations to help encourage their transition into skilled sector opportunities. Additionally, programs should leverage post-secondary institutions and ‘innovation hubs’, as partnerships with postsecondary educational institutions and non-institutional educational partners can improve the diversity and effectiveness of skills training offerings.

Given the variety of different skills offered by food sustainability programs, a unifying competency framework is needed to understand how foundational skills can be upskilled into analytical, and technical skills. Participation in an agtech transition will also require additional competencies in AI, data management, and digital skills to ensure communities have foundational literacy and tools to engage with agtech.

Finally, many programs address food sustainability, but do not include or record the demographic details of participants. Improved program evaluation is needed to capture the experiences of Indigenous Peoples and other equity-deserving groups.