PROOF Testifies Before The Senate: Food Insecurity Can Not Be Solved By Agriculture And Agri-Food Sector

Last month, Dr. Daniel Dutton, Associate Professor of Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University and PROOF investigator, testified before the Senate about why food-based interventions are not the solution to food insecurity in Canada.

The Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is currently studying the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada. Dr. Dutton’s testimony cut to the heart of a confusion that has plagued policymaking for years.

Dr. Dutton emphasized an important distinction that often gets lost in policy discussions – food insecurity is completely different from how the term “food security” is used to describe a wide range of food issues like agricultural production, supply chains, and food system resilience, which this committee works on.

Household food insecurity is a specific and clearly defined concept in Canada: the inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints. It has been measured for over two decades through a well-studied and validated set of 18 questions about households’ experiences of food deprivation due to a lack of money over the past 12 months. The most recent data collected in 2024 shows that almost 10 million Canadians lived in a food-insecure household.

The Problem of Conflation

The conflation of these issues presents a major problem for policymaking. It leads to actions taken in the name of reducing food insecurity that aren’t actually able to move the needle.

The solution to food insecurity lies in addressing the underlying income inadequacy and instability. The experiences of food deprivation due to financial constraints are an indicator of pervasive material deprivation and compromises to necessities beyond just food.

“This inappropriate combination of household food insecurity with issues grouped under the banner of food security complicates the language for people in government trying to grapple with the problem of household food insecurity.”

What the Evidence Shows

The Public Health Agency of Canada recently conducted several systematic reviews that looked at all of the Canadian research on interventions to reduce food insecurity and came to the same conclusion. The things that reduce food insecurity are when policies improve households’ financial circumstances, like higher wages, new income benefits, or enhancements to existing ones. The reviews also show that giving households food through various mechanisms, like community gardens, food charity, or school food, are unable to reduce food insecurity.

“The idea that giving a household food does not impact food insecurity is a major sticking point for many people, because it sounds unintuitive.

The reason this unintuitive idea is true is because of what household food insecurity reflects – the structural factors facing a household. Those can include the adequacy and stability of income, unexpected expenses, cost of living – none of which change when we deliver food.”

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s own audit of the Local Food Infrastructure Fund (LFIF) and the Auditor General’s review of the pandemic era Emergency Food Security Fund and Surplus Food Rescue Program also found no evidence that these programs reduced food insecurity. In fact, the audit recommended changing the LFIF’s policy outcome from reducing food insecurity to improving “community food security”, in recognition that the provision of infrastructure for food programs does not address the problem.

Read Canada’s national food policy is at risk of enshrining a two-tiered food system for more on the LFIF.

Earlier testimony from government departments like Employment and Social Development Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, other researchers, and representatives from community and agri-food policy organizations, also acknowledged that food insecurity is a problem of inadequate financial resources.

There is wide consensus that actions taken by agriculture and agri-food have not accomplished their stated goals around food insecurity reduction. More accountability is needed for the public funds spent on food-based interventions in the name of food insecurity reduction despite no supporting evidence or evaluation.

What Actually Works: Income Policy

Federal interventions should focus on income policies managed by Employment and Social Development Canada, not agriculture departments. Dr. Dutton’s own research found that when low-income individuals turn 65 and qualify for seniors’ public pensions, their likelihood of being food insecure decreases substantially. These programs provide more income adequacy and stability than the jobs they had or provincial social assistance programs.

Labour market participation and the existing benefits for working-age Canadians and their families have failed to do the same. There has not been any meaningful action on federal benefits to address the income inadequacy, with no major improvements to federal income supports beyond increases from indexation, which for low-income households is likely outpaced by the higher inflation for necessities making up more of their budgets.

The high rate of food insecurity exists in the context of our current income policies, so thoughtful redesign of the programs that form our social safety net is urgently needed.

“Decreasing household food insecurity in Canada means acting on the social issues that drive it. That means acting high on the chain of events that leads to food insecurity. That action is uniquely possible through intervention at the federal level. For example, income policies managed by ESDC.”

The Path Forward

Dr. Dutton’s testimony reframes food insecurity as a social policy issue, not an agricultural one. While food systems issues are important in their own right, they are distinct from food insecurity.
The problem of food insecurity cannot be solved by agriculture and agri-food sector. Policy action to reduce food insecurity must be grounded in this understanding. The federal government has many key policy levers and the ability to pursue other interventions that could go a long way to reducing food insecurity, like basic income.

We hope the committee’s final report will advance policy action grounded in the evidence: reducing food insecurity requires federal leadership on income security, not more funding for food provision or agricultural programs that can’t address the root causes.