The Barton report of 2016 and follow up work by various agrifood groups has boosted recognition of the sector's economic importance, he told the Senate agriculture committee. What has emerged during the last two years “is a consensus that we need to establish a pre-competitive Canada food brand that would demonstrate to our trading partners that when they buy Canadian food, they are buying the world's most trusted, safe and sustainable.”

To achieve that status, “we need to become the global leader in standards pertaining to safety and sustainability,” he said. Then Canada needs “to develop the information and technology systems, things like blockchain and other such things, to help steward and safeguard our brand. Then we need to market our brand so that the Canada food brand becomes globally recognized and synonymous with safe and sustainable.”

To accomplish those goals involves building on the reputation of Canada's food regulatory system to codify and solidify “what safety, trust and sustainability means,” he said. While significant parts of the food chain have made progress, “many of these systems are fragmented and we don't have a full value chain sustainability assurance system.”

The Canadian Agri-Food Sustainability Initiative could set safety and sustainability standards that should be included in the national food policy council under development by the Agriculture and Health departments. Canada needs “information technology systems to ensure that Canadian food systems are transparent and cybersecure. This really moves our discussion into the realm of cloud computing, cybersecurity and blockchain.”

When these steps are reached, Canada needs “to ensure that we are rewarded by our international competitors for doing these things,” he said. That's where a Canada Brand comes into play to reach consumers around the world looking for the kind of food Canada is supplying.

The federal government can play a key role in establishing the Canada Brand with trade missions, he said. “We can build a Canada Brand that will be used to demonstrate to consumers around the world that when they buy Canadian food, they are feeding themselves and their families the safest and most sustainable food that the world has to offer.”

Good examples of trusted food products are “the identity-preserved soybeans, a non-GMO edible soybean for which Ontario soybean producers have created a high value-added market, specifically feeding the Japanese consumers' demand for things like soybeans, edamame and miso,” he said. “There they have created this identity-preserved system which allows that consumer a clear line back to the farmer and an understanding of what happened at each step of the way. That is what trusted is.”

Work remains to be done on improving our sustainable reputation “as a way of demonstrating to our consumers all over the world that when they buy Canadian food, they are buying something that is a bit special,” he said.

One positive step would the creation of a national food policy council with the “mandate to codify existing sustainability and safety standards and ensure that they are the most rigorous in the world,” he said.

The council or the Canadian Agricultural Partnership could “establish national standards for pooling and aggregating agricultural data,” he said. “There is a very strong role for federal leadership to help ensure that our data is handled in a way that is safe, transparent and cyber-secure.”

While Canada enjoys “a huge reputation we can build on for safety and sustainability, I'm nervous that we don't have an ability to protect that. In terms of global appearances and global perceptions, we are far ahead.”

Animal agriculture is in for some fundamental changes as people consumer less meat, he said. Livestock production will “decrease as a portion of our overall diet, both for sustainability, health and simple market reasons, all tied together. Industry is bringing on new alternatives that consumers are finding really exciting. For the new-branded President's Choice cricket protein, demand exceeds supply.

“The industry as a whole has to realize that their total volume is going to shrink, but their profit levels can be maintained if they adopt a higher value-added product, by marketing as organic, free-range or free from.”Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.