Happy Food Freedom Day!

No, it doesn’t mean free food, far from it

By Stacy Ferris –

On February 12, 2009, the average Canadian will have earned enough income to pay his or her individual grocery bill for the entire year.

In observing Food Freedom Day, farmers in Ontario and across the country will celebrate their role in providing consumers with one of the safest and most affordable food supplies in the world.

Food Freedom Day is occurring slightly later in 2009 due to the recent rise in the price of food. This bucks the trend of recent years, where the disposable income of Canadians rose significantly faster than the cost of food.

However, “thanks to farmers, Canadians still get the best deal in the western world for their food dollar,” says Bette Jean Crews, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). In many parts of the world, the cost of food is significantly higher.

Member countries within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), on average, spend 8.3% more of their disposable income on food than Canadians. Australians spend 12.7% more, the Japanese spend 35.7% more, and Mexicans spend over 125% more of their disposable income on food than Canadians.

In 2008, while prices in some agriculture commodities rose, Canadian farmers continued to take only a very small percentage of the consumers’ food dollar at the store.

In 2005, a grain farmer received 7¢ for the corn in a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and 11¢ for the wheat in a loaf of bread.

[Kellogg’s, by the way, cancelled Michael Phelps endorsement contract for taking a toke, but had ignored his previous driving-while-under-the-influence of booze conviction. Strange priorities for the sugary cereal maker, don’tcha think?—Editor]

Given the processed nature of many consumer foods, it is far more likely that an increase in energy costs played a much larger role in the retail price increase.