Growing Stronger – Aiming for Resilience in our Canadian Food System

Where did we succeed? What must we fix?

From the earliest moments of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been questions and concerns around food system’s resilience and its impacts on everyone from farmers to consumers. From the panic buying that emptied grocery store shelves in the first weeks of the lockdown to the paradox of both rising food bank use and food being dumped; from challenges in securing temporary foreign workers to keeping meat packing plants operational, COVID-19’s effect on the food system has been dramatic.

In the post-COVID-19 world, seeking answers to the key question of “how to build a resilient Canadian agri-food system?” will become more relevant and more urgent than ever, as this crisis may very well be the tip of the iceberg, bringing to light vulnerabilities and structural issues in the Canadian agri-food system.


Arrell Food Institute and the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute invite you to participate in a project that will gather evidence on what happened to the Canadian food system during the pandemic at this website.

From your contributions they will build recommendations to help Canada weather future disruptions.

Submissions are accepted in .doc or .pdf formatting. They will be accepting submissions until July 17th, 2020.

Producers can use this document to guide their submissions.

Click here to submit your evidence or experience document.