Despite Rising Costs, Canadians Still Get Good Value for Money

OTTAWA, February 9, 2009 -- On February 12, 2009, the average Canadian will have enough income to pay his or her individual grocery bill for the entire year. In observing Food Freedom Day, farmers 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. 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 soared, Canadian farmers continued to take only a very small percentage of the consumers' food dollar at the grocery store.  In 2005, a grain farmer received $0.07 for the corn in a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes and $0.11 for the wheat in a loaf of bread.  Even with a doubling in the price of commodities, those costs would then become $0.14 and $0.22, certainly not justifying the significant retail mark-ups which many consumers complained about.  Given the processed nature of many consumer foods, it is far more likely that an increase in the cost of energy played a much larger role in the retail price increase.

Canadians continued to receive high quality food produced at the highest food safety and environmental standards.  To ensure that consumers are able to identify Canadian food products and support our agriculture sector, the CFA will continue to advocate for effective ingredient-based 'Product of Canada' guidelines that are both informative to the consumer and practical to the agri-food industry.
 
For more information on how Food Freedom Day is calculated, please click here. For more Food Freedom Day facts, please click here.

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Founded in 1935 to provide Canada's farmers with a single voice in Ottawa, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture is the country's largest farmers' organization. Its members include provincial general farm organizations as well as national and inter-provincial commodity organizations from every province. Through its members, CFA represents over 200,000 Canadian farmers and farm families.