The report was full of predictions that came true, as well as a few surprises. This year’s report was the 16th annual.

Food prices were driven higher in 2025 by meat, said Sylvain Charlebois, the lead of Canada’s Food Price Report. Charlebois is the Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. He leads Canada’s Food Price Report, but the report was developed by a collective of scholars.

“In fact, we claimed last year that meat would be driving food inflation, and we underestimated how significantly meat prices would go up. That was really the big story in 2025,” he said.

Meat prices to stay high

Unfortunately, the group expects meat prices will remain a huge factor for 2026.

“Beef is an issue, of course, it’s been an issue for a while now, and we don’t see how the situation will normalize itself before at least mid-year 2027,” he said. “Ranchers are leaving the industry. It’s difficult for ranchers across North America.”

The high prices of beef are encouraging people to change to other types of meat, like chicken.

“We’re short on chicken because of higher beef prices. The situation with beef is really a major issue for meat counter economics in general,” he said.

Chicken raised in Canada is under supply management.

“Supply shouldn’t be a problem, but it is a problem right now, because we’re importing more chicken from abroad. But I don’t think that is going to last. I do think the chicken industry will recover eventually. It’s kind of awkward to have supply management and import more chicken from the United States right now,” he said.

Fruit and vegetable inflation down

Vegetables and fruits had their inflation rates go down in 2025 compared to 2024.

“We were expecting increases to be in the positive, but the increases didn’t accelerate as much as we expected,” he said.

The group thought the “Buy Canadian” movement and the entire American boycott would put a lot of pressure on grocers to source products that are cheaper or the same price in America.

“But we were spared, and I think that’s due to the Canadian dollar. I think the Canadian dollar remained a non-issue. That came as a surprise, I would say,” said Charlebois.

Food affordability is a top concern for consumers. A quarter of Canadian households are considered food insecure, and nearly 2.2 million people visited food banks in Canada monthly this year.

Charlebois said there are numerous factors that affect food prices including geopolitics, global weather events, policy enactment, consumer behaviour and changes in retail models. Energy costs, climate change, interest rates, labour costs, the level of consolidation in a sector, and consumer demand, including whether consumers have more money or less money to spend on food.

“These are the things that impact food prices over time. But the bottom line is that not one node of the growth of the food supply chain totally controls food prices,” he said.

Trade wars affect food prices

In 2025, food prices were affected by the trade dispute between Canada and the United States and subsequent policy changes. Consumer-led movements also altered the economic retail landscape, impacting food price inflation.

Charlebois said farmers would say there’s a weak correlation between protein prices, and retail prices, and they’re correct to say so.

“So even though there is a weak correlation between the two, production does have an impact on how food is sourced to supply grocery stores in general,” he said.

When people spend more money at the grocery store, the farmer gets a bigger proportion of the farm bill. With retail, 13 to 15 per cent of the money spent at the grocery store goes back to the farmer compared to food service, where about four per cent to five percent goes back to the farmer from food service.

“Right now, there is a strong movement towards staying retail for consumers, because they’re trying to save as much money as possible, and they’re avoiding restaurants, so that could actually be a positive for farmers in general,” said Charlebois.

Temporary foreign workers

Temporary foreign workers are widely used along the food supply chain. In 2024, Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program brought in over 78,000 workers into the agricultural industry. The Canadian government is revisiting its immigration policy and has announced plans to reduce the share of temporary residents in Canada to less than five per cent of the population by 2027, to encourage more domestic labour and improve youth employment rates. Agriculture is exempt from this cap.

The current population of temporary foreign workers is at seven per cent.

There are concerns that shifts with temporary workers could lead to a major labour shortage in agriculture, disrupting the supply chain and costing businesses already operate on tight margins. The costs would be passed down to the consumer.

Charlebois said the research team is concerned about the temporary foreign worker problem.

“It’s a very important program to support our farmers,” he said. The information about temporary foreign workers was added to Canada’s Food Price Report, to send a clear signal to government that the temporary foreign worker program in agriculture should not be compromised, he said.

Food bill to rise “a lot”

The report also contains predictions for 2026.

“We’re expecting the average family (of four) to see their food bill increased by $1,000, so we’re expecting an increase of four to six per cent, so that’s a lot. I believe it’s the highest we’ve ever seen in 16 years. That’s going to be pushed by two categories; meat and the centre of the store. That’s pantry goods and dry goods. This is not going to help consumers,” he said.

“We think it’s going to push inflation higher,” he said.

The ongoing trade dispute with the United States will continue to affect prices next year. The inflationary aspects of the tariffs and counter-tariffs will continue in 2026 as trade tensions reshape the economic landscape. Canada is strengthening its relationships with other international trading partners to build resilience and competitiveness.

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The report, co-authored by research assistant Shawn Wiskar and centre director Guillaume Lhermie and released Thursday, used a focus group of six stakeholders in the Canadian poultry industry. It recommends several measures, primarily focused on increasing research and streamlining existing systems.

In its conclusion it states that “with the small size of Canadian poultry farms, expectations are placed unfairly on farmers across the country, creating regional strain and limiting the market’s ability to grow.”

Wiskar said the research for the report, which began last year, was “conceptualized out of an idea that it was really important for public policy to be built out of evidence-based and informed policy from producers.”

The think tank, which focuses on ag sector policy analysis and is based at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, “was really trying to function here as kind of a bridge-builder between the government of Canada as well as the government of Alberta and the producer groups,” he said.

The four main policy changes the report recommends are:

• an increase in provincially funded research;
• streamlining of the approval process for vaccines already approved in comparative markets;
• a comprehensive analysis of the poultry supply chains in other countries; and
• increased communication between poultry producers and the federal and provincial governments.

“We certainly hope at the very least this gets a conversation started between the producer groups and the government,” Wiskar said.

“The takeaway message from this report is that we think there is an increased need for efficiency in these markets, and the first step to that is improving communication between the different levels of government, the different commodity groups, as well the overarching marketing board.”

‘Barrier to entry’

Wiskar said that the poultry sector’s quota system was also a topic of concern for its focus group.

“Canadian poultry farms are a lot smaller, and their operations have to be smaller, due to the quota system, when you compare it to something like the beef sector, which doesn’t have that quota system.”

In the section on sector challenges, the report calls the quota system a “barrier to entry in the poultry sector, as farmers must bid to purchase a quota of production.”

The report said its focus group viewed Canada’s supply chain model as “posing the industry’s greatest challenges but also as providing its greatest support,” Participants cited the protection it provides from market fluctuations, but also its tight profit margins.

Wiskar said he didn’t think there was much in the report that would be unknown to producers or governments, but there is plenty the Canadian public could take away from it.

“It kind of seemed to us like the focus group we sat down with really thought that poultry was conceptualized by the public as being something more similar to what you might get out of the United States,” Wiskar said.

In Canada, he added, “poultry farming is a smaller operation, and it’s really bound up in supply management, which is not something that’s particularly well understood by the Canadian public.”

“The chicken farmers and the turkey farmers and the egg hatching farmers, they have different priorities, and they are functionally different industries, so it’s important not to group them all together.”

Asked for a review of the report, Chicken Farmers of Canada, for one, declined comment.

A CFC representative, noting the “limited sample size” of the report’s focus group, said Friday via email it could be misleading or “even risky” to draw conclusions from the report’s methodology.

Egg Farmers of Canada similarly said it had “no specific comment” on the report but also noted it was “based on a focus group that included a small sample of size of six agricultural stakeholders.”

The Simpson Centre is due to release a sister report on the challenges faced by the beef industry in several weeks.

— Jonah Grignon reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

Updated May 17, 2023 to include Egg Farmers of Canada comment.

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Transport Canada, in a release Wednesday, said the goal of the terminal project is to “increase the number of containers stored onsite, improve the quality of the grain-cleaning service, optimize traffic flow in the yard, and increase capacity for loading and handling containers.”

Set up in 2014 by La coop federee (now Sollio) and other investors, the CanEst facility is sited next to the port’s container terminals to receive grain by rail and truck and provide services such as product cleaning, sifting, packaging and containerizing.

The CanEst terminal, served by both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways, has capacity to receive over 100 rail cars and also has with 91 concrete silos, for storage capacity of 68,000 tonnes.

Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Annie Koutrakis, parliamentary secretary for transport, announced the CanEst funding a week after the final report from the National Supply Chain Task Force was released.

That report, released Oct. 6, the Task Force included a letter to the minister with an “urgent call to address Canada’s transportation supply chain crisis.”

Alghabra said Wednesday the investment for CanEst will help keep supply chains running efficiently.

The task force report goes on to list multiple calls to action, directed mostly at the Canadian government and transportation and supply chain stakeholders.

“Immediately undertake actions to ‘unstick’ the transportation supply chain,” the report’s first recommendation reads.

“These [actions] include addressing congestion at port container terminals and prioritizing government attention on regulations, policies and procedures that are impeding the effective operation of a reliable supply chain.”

Transport Canada said it considers the CanEst project a step toward addressing the issues raised by the task force.

The CanEst project will cost $18 million in total, with the federal component coming from the department’s $2 billion National Trade Corridors Fund (NTCF), which can back both public- and private-sector projects.

CanEst general manager Marc-Aurel Clapperton said the events of the past couple of years have “only deepened our commitment to streamlining the export process.”

Montreal Port Authority CEO Martin Imbleau said the project’s “favourable repercussions” will be “felt even on farms in the Prairies, Ontario and all of Quebec.”

“As Canada’s trade volumes continue to increase, investment in critical infrastructure assets such as seaports, railways, highways and roads, and airports must also increase to meet demand,” the task force said in its report.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, in Wednesday’s release, said port infrastructure is “critical” for supporting the flow of Canadian ag products.

— Hannah Polk reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Regina.

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The strike is the latest risk to Canada’s battered supply chain, which last year weathered floods in British Columbia that washed out track and suspended access to Canada’s biggest port. The COVID-19 pandemic, a trucker shortage and costly global freight rates have also hampered the flow of goods and ignited food inflation.

Canada, the second-largest country by area after Russia, depends heavily on rail to move commodities and manufactured goods to port.

CP’s network runs across much of southern Canada, extending as far south as Kansas City in the United States. Grain is CP’s largest business.

The last major Canadian railway labour stoppage, at Canadian National Railway in 2019, lasted eight days and took weeks for shippers to recover.

Some 3,000 members of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, including engineers, conductors and yard workers, voted this month to potentially strike just after midnight Wednesday. The union has not yet given the required 72 hours notice, however, meaning no legal work stoppage can occur before Friday at the earliest, a CP spokesperson said.

The main outstanding issues are wages, benefits and pensions, the union said.

“Should the (union) exercise its right to strike, CP will be unable to operate the railroad,” CP chief marketing officer John Brooks said in a March bulletin.

CP said the key bargaining issue is the union’s request for higher pension caps. Chief financial officer Nadeem Velani said at a New York investor conference on Tuesday that the railway is unwilling to accept that demand.

Velani said the company is considering a lockout before any strike, but would also have to provide 72 hours notice and has not done so.

Manufacturers of goods ranging from food to cars are already struggling with supply chain disruptions, said a coalition of Canadian trade associations.

Numerous U.S. farm industry groups wrote a joint letter to President Joe Biden this month asking him and the Canadian government to avert a strike.

CP carries U.S. grain to Pacific Northwest export terminals, and moves potash fertilizer into the United States, which is critical ahead of spring planting.

Potash prices have soared with western sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and against Belarus, the No. 2 and 3 producers after Canada.

A CP strike would have “serious implications” for potash transport to ports for shipment to offshore buyers, said Natashia Stinka, spokesperson for Canpotex, the export company owned by fertilizer producers Nutrien and Mosaic Co.

Federal mediators are assisting the two sides in talks and the Canadian government prefers a negotiated settlement, said a spokesperson for the employment ministry.

The Canadian government can seek to pass legislation that would order workers back to their jobs if they strike.

— Reporting for Reuters by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa.

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Bayer, the chemical company whose Roundup brand remains the best known of the glyphosate herbicides, reported as much in an open letter to customers dated Friday.

The letter, signed by Udo Schneider, the company’s global head for active ingredient manufacturing, said one of the company’s “key raw material suppliers experienced a mechanical failure in its manufacturing plant which leads to a substantial reduction in production rates.”

That breakdown, which Schneider said “constitutes a force majeure event for Bayer,” is expected to take about three months to repair, he wrote.

“Force majeure,” in contract law, refers to an unforeseeable set of circumstances under which a party to a contract is unable to fulfill its agreed-upon terms. It’s often referred to as the “act of God” clause, under which a party may be legally excused for the resulting breach of contract.

In this case, Schneider wrote, Bayer’s “ability to supply its customers with glyphosate or glyphosate-containing products,” including current purchase orders and other agreements, “has been impacted.”

A representative for Bayer CropScience’s Canadian arm on Sunday confirmed the letter, saying via email the company is “on track to restore production, and we’ve sourced additional materials and made other mitigation efforts to help best manage this situation.”

As for the impact on farmers’ ability to lock in a supply of Roundup this year, “we’re currently working to understand what the true impact may be in Canada and are committed to communicate with our customers as we know more in the coming days and weeks,” the Canadian rep said.

Bayer, Schneider said, is “co-operat(ing) seamlessly” with the supplier in this case along with “other partners of trust” to limit the impact of the problem.

On top of this issue, Bayer’s Canadian rep reiterated the ag chem market worldwide was already “experiencing historically tight supply due to challenging global trade flows, effects of the global pandemic and other forces.”

Neither Schneider nor Bayer CropScience Canada named the specific supplier, the location of the breakdown or the ingredient in question.

The Roundup brand of glyphosate came to Bayer when it took over chemical and seed company Monsanto in 2019.

Debuting in the mid-1970s as a broad-spectrum Group 9 herbicide for control of grassy and broadleaf weeds, glyphosate’s market reach expanded vastly in the late 1990s when Monsanto launched “Roundup Ready” varieties of crops such as soybeans, canola and corn, all genetically modified to tolerate applications of the chemical. Its reach expanded further as the chemistry came off patent in the early 2000s.

However, since in-crop applications of glyphosate have become more commonplace, a number of weed varieties have developed resistance to the product.

In recent years glyphosate has also entangled Bayer in lawsuits from users claiming exposure to Roundup caused them to develop cancers, in the wake of a 2015 decision from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifying the chemical as “probably carcinogenic.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Over the last week, prices for western Canadian green peas have lost 30 cents per bushel at $14.50-$16.20 per bushel delivered, according to Prairie Ag Hotwire. Those for yellow peas have dropped back 50 cents, at $16.50-$18/bu.

The time of year is one factor, Mosnaim noted, as markets are often slow from mid-December to mid-January as people are on holidays.

Also, he said, sales previously made were behind in being exported. Supply chain issues have been an ongoing problem due to the COVID-19 pandemic, further exacerbated by a shortage of containers in which most pulses are shipped.

“How can you have new sales when your old sales are not gone yet? Generally speaking, you will have slow demand until whatever is in the books is shipped,” he said.

“But every day that passes, you’re closer to new crop and new-crop pricing,” he warned, stressing that buyers are becoming less interested in the current crop.

If an exporter were to buy from a farmer now, it’s a week or more before there’s an actual delivery, Mosnaim said. Then it will be the end of February to early March before it’s at the port and arriving at its destination around late March.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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The Texas Arctic Blast in February and Hurricane Ida in August disrupted U.S. fertilizer production. Then, prices of natural gas, a key input in producing nitrogen, soared in Europe due to high demand and low supplies.

Global urea prices this month topped $1,000 per tonne for the first time, according to BMO Capital Markets (all figures US$). Russia and China have curbed exports.

In the United States, nitrogen fertilizer supplies are adequate for applications before winter, said Daren Coppock, CEO at U.S.-based Agricultural Retailers Association. Applying fertilizer before winter reduces farmers’ spring workload.

But with prices so high, some farmers are delaying purchases, risking a scramble for supplies during their busiest time of year, Coppock said.

Global nitrogen fertilizer sales were worth $53 billion in 2020, and prices are at least 80 per cent higher so far this year, according to Argus Media.

Normally, MKC, a Kansas farm co-operative, sells fertilizer to farmers for payment up front with delivery months down the road, giving growers certainty about a key expense.

With prices soaring, MKC has scaled back its pre-paid sales out of caution.

“You just don’t know what the price is going to be. It has put a lot of retailers in a tough spot,” said Troy Walker, MKC’s director of retail fertilizer.

Delaying fertilizer purchases until spring runs the risk of further supply chain congestion as farmers rush to apply fertilizer and plant seed during a tight window.

“There’s going to be a lot of people who wait and see,” Coppock said. “(But) if everybody’s scrambling in the spring to get enough, somebody’s corn isn’t going to get covered.”

Wisconsin farmer Jim Zimmerman decided to bite the bullet and secure all his fertilizer for spring, this year.

“It’s next year’s prices I’m worried about,” Zimmerman said. “It could get worse.”

Nutrien, the largest U.S. farm supplier, has secured less nitrogen fertilizer than usual for spring delivery because manufacturers are making less available, said Jeff Tarsi, the company’s senior vice-president of retail. Sales to farmers are likely to occur closer to spring than usual, he said.

The one nitrogen product that is running short in North America is urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), said Kreg Ruhl, crop nutrients manager at Illinois-based farm co-operative Growmark. UAN is a liquid form that is convenient for farmers to apply.

The U.S. International Trade Commission is conducting an anti-dumping investigation into UAN from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago, at the request of U.S. producer CF Industries.

Importers are reluctant to book shipments into 2022, because they may have to pay retroactive duties if CF wins its case, Ruhl said.

Farmers could reduce their fertilizer needs by planting more soybeans and less corn, but there is little evidence many plan to do so.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast U.S. corn plantings would decline to 92 million acres in 2022, from 93.3 million in 2021.

Waiting until spring to buy fertilizer could disappoint some farmers, said Matt Conacher, senior fertilizer manager at Federated Co-operatives Limited, a Canadian wholesale seller.

“My advice is, if you can get your fertilizer now, do so.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago.

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Canada, the world’s top exporter of natural Christmas trees, is grappling with a shortage that will likely be exacerbated by historic flooding in British Columbia, where some tree farms are underwater.

A phenomenon known as an atmospheric river dumped a month’s worth of rain on the Pacific province in just two days, destroying roads and bridges and leaving some communities cut off from the rest of Canada.

Canada exports about 2.3 million Christmas trees per year, with some 97 per cent going to the United States. While British Columbia does not export cut Christmas trees, it is a significant domestic supplier. That means shortfalls in that province will have to be made up with supply from elsewhere, leaving fewer Canadian trees for export.

“We can’t ship them because all the roads are closed,” said Arthur Loewen, whose tree farm at Chilliwack has been swamped. “We’re basically shut down until the water recedes.”

Trees already cut and wrapped for wholesale buyers are piled up on wood pallets, surrounded by water, he said. His self-serve fields, where people choose and cut their own Christmas trees, are 75 per cent flooded.

Loewen said that if the waters don’t subside within the week, younger trees could be damaged, hurting future supply. Water levels were starting to drop by Thursday.

The flood impact comes as North America is already seeing more demand than available supply, in part due to people staying closer to home in the pandemic.

“In North America, we’ve seen such an increase in demand for the real tree,” Shirley Brennan, executive director of the Canadian Christmas Trees Association, said. “I’ve been fielding calls at my office since the spring.”

Dwindling production has also hampered supply. Canada had 2,381 Christmas tree farms in 2011, which fell to 1,872 by 2016 and continues to decline as farmers retire. Planted acres fell by 16 per cent in the same period.

Late frosts, hot and dry summers and a labour shortage are adding to the problem, particularly in Ontario, where planted acres were down by 25 per cent from 2011 to 2016.

Dan Laird, who owns a tree farm in Ottawa, said he won’t be selling Christmas trees this year for the first time since 1977, citing the summer weather toll on his crops.

“I just don’t have an abundance of trees,” he said, adding that he’d need to double his staff to open up this holiday season. “I couldn’t get the workers.”

Christmas tree buyers can expect less selection than in the past and should expect to pay 10-15 per cent more this year, said Quebec farmer Larry Downey.

— Reporting for Reuters by Julie Gordon in Ottawa; additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal.

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The economy expanded by 0.4 percent in August, missing estimates, and looked set to show no growth in September, when supply chain issues crimped auto exports and retail sales declined, Statistics Canada said.

The agriculture sector, hit hard by hot and dry conditions, is also weighing on economic activity.

Third quarter annualized GDP rose by just 1.9 percent, Statscan said in a flash estimate, much less than the 5.5 percent forecast by the Bank of Canada on Wednesday, when it signaled a rate hike could come as soon as April 2022.

Even though the central bank and Statistics Canada use slightly different ways of measuring GDP, analysts said the third quarter projections made an early hike less likely.

“This reduces the chance of the Bank hiking interest rates as soon as the second quarter next year,” said Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics. Economic activity, which remains about 1 percent below pre-pandemic levels, is unlikely to close that gap until early 2022, he added.

Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets, noted the preliminary third quarter data revealed the impacts of global supply chain difficulties on the ability of the goods sector to meet orders.

“The supply bottlenecks are both raising inflation and impeding growth at the same time,” he said in a note, adding Canada could enjoy stronger growth and softer inflation in 2022 if the challenges eased.

The Bank of Canada expects inflation, which touched an 18-year high at 4.4 percent in September, to rise further this year and then average 3.4 percent in 2022, above its 1-3 percent control range.

The Canadian dollar was trading 0.4 percent lower at 1.2387 to the greenback, or 80.73 U.S. cents. Investors continued to price in a first rate hike in March.

The August gain of 0.4 percent was behind analyst estimates of 0.7 percent, as agriculture weighed. Overall, 15 of 20 industrial sectors posted increases, with services-producing industries up by 0.6 percent while goods-producing industries declined 0.1 percent.

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Freeland, speaking to reporters in Washington after meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, said she was broadly optimistic about the strength of Canada’s economic recovery from COVID-19.

The rebound in demand for goods as restrictions are lifted has exposed supply chain shortages, with firms scrambling for workers, ships and even fuel to power factories, threatening the fledgling bounceback.

“The issue of both supply chain congestion and supply chain shortages, was discussed … it’s definitely a concern on the minds of finance ministers around the world,” Freeland said.

“We are definitely mindful of the supply chain issues in the Canadian economy. We are monitoring the supply chain and Canadian ports, very, very closely.”

Freeland said the process of restarting the economy after the shutdowns was inevitably going to be uneven.

— Reporting for Reuters by David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon.

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