Supply chain, labour, transport issues mean you’ll likely be paying more for food in 2022

With seven weeks to go until the end of the year, agriculture industry representatives have a warning for customers heading into 2022: Prepare for a hit to your food budget.

“There are so many factors. I don’t think I could say any one factor hits the hardest because it’s an entire supply chain that impacts what everybody gets all along the whole chain,” Crispin Colvin, a board member with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and a co-owner of Torodin Farm in Thorndale, told CityNews on Friday when asked to reflect on the anticipated price increases.

“I mean you throw in manufacturing, distribution, retailing on top of the labour shortages…”

In recent weeks there have been reports about escalating prices in a variety of commodities such as dairy, meat and wheat.

Late in October, the Canadian Dairy Commission announced online recommendations to increase the price dairy farmers receive for their milk by 8.4 per cent — something the Crown corporation later attributed to significant increases in the costs of fuel, equipment and cattle feed.

While reflecting on the past year, Colvin said farmers in southern Ontario had a good year and yield in 2021 when it came to the needed amount of rain and sun.

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However, he said western Canada was hit hard by drought and an invasion of grasshoppers into crops. With a worse year for hay in that part of the country, Colvin said beef farmers didn’t have enough feed for their cattle — forcing a cull and sale of animals.

“That’ll impact costs all the way down the food chain, literally. If you don’t have the animals to breed, you’re not going to have the meat in the stores just the same as if you don’t have the sun and the rain when you should you’re not going to have the crops, so you won’t have wheat, for example, for milling,” he said.

“Even though prices are going up in the grocery store, it’s not the farmer that’s necessarily getting the bulk of that effect. It’s impacted by the entire food chain from transportation to grocery stores.”

Global supply chain woes fuelled by COVID-19 have been felt in the agricultural industry.

Colvin said labour shortages in the trucking industry and in other sectors have affected the ability to move materials, which in turn adds to the slowing down of the supply chain. Pandemic-related shutdowns at plants and issues with cross-border trade have also added to the challenges.

Broader issues, he said, can be seen right at the farm level. For example, Colvin looked at replacing combine tires. He said pre-pandemic it wouldn’t be uncommon to replace that tire on the same day to get a combine moving again, but now he said it could take a week — thereby introducing further delays in production.

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Heading into 2022, Colvin said there is the annual worry about the weather and if it will be conducive for farming. But with supply chain issues unlikely to be fully resolved by the beginning of the season, there are fears about accessing raw materials like seed and fertilizer.

“If I can’t feed my crop, then I’m not going to get as good a crop, so that’s going to impact what I get on my bottom line,” he said.

Despite what is facing Ontario’s agricultural sector, Colvin said residents should take some comfort in that there isn’t an overall food shortage right now.

“In North America, particularly in Canada, we’ve been incredibly resilient and have been able to meet most of the demands. Yeah, the grocery stores might be a little bit light in some areas, but by and large we’re not going to go without food and I think that’s one of the things that Canadians in particular really need to focus on,” he said.

“We’re going to have something to eat. It may not be the 12 or 14 choices I normally have at the grocery store, it might be two or three, but I’ve got lots to eat.”

— With files from Mike Visser and Richard Southern