Flashback to March 2020; it was the beginning of the pandemic, and I was in my final month of pregnancy and in shock. When I went grocery shopping and saw almost every shelf empty in the store, it was scary. I even had to go to multiple stores to find a potato and an onion. Honestly, I felt that I had gotten sucked into the movie A Quiet Place since it had all the elements; an alien virus, people locked away, you only went out to get supplies, plus I was pregnant. This story was scarier because you could not even see your attacker.

My father got so frustrated with the lack of food in the markets that he decided to expand what he grew in his garden, saying that he would take control of the situation and use his skills to grow 20 types of fruits and vegetables.

I had friends who never cooked, wondering how they would survive now that all the restaurants were closed.

Everyone wondered, "What are we going to eat for the first time globally?"

The pandemic brought our collective humanity to the table.

Eventually, some of the supply systems were able to get back in place, and getting food became the social outing for the day or week. To pass the time, comfort our anxious feelings, learn something new, and get away from the television, people started baking, cooking exotic foods, planning decadent family meals, and ordering takeout.

Food became the drug of choice for those in North America, and depending on what part of the world you are in, it became harder to come by.

As the pandemic has gone on and started to dissipate in different parts of the world, farmers and suppliers have begun to get back to work. Now the war between Russia and Ukraine is causing mass debilitation in the food system. Once again, people around the globe will need to adjust how they eat.

To find out more about how this affects everyday people, I reached out to Dr. Michael Von Massow, a professor and the OAC Chair in Food Systems Leadership at the Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics Department at the University of Guelph. His research interests include animal welfare and antibiotic use, food waste, retail and restaurant food demand, pricing, supply chain management, and value chain structure and performance. When Dr. Von Massow is not teaching, you can find him writing features about the changing landscape of food production and consumption and hosting the Food Focus Podcast, which focuses on conversations and perspectives on issues of interest in the food system. His passion for animals and agriculture has made him a leading expert in the industry.

My Interview with Dr. Michael Von Massow

What Is Contributing To The Rise In The Cost Of Food?

“I think what we're seeing is a perfect storm of factors driving food prices up faster than we have seen them go up in a long time across the board. Let's start with the most recent, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It impacts food prices in three primary ways. The first is that Ukraine and Russia are significant contributors to world trade in wheat.

They represent not 30% of the production of wheat, which is a quote I've seen a few times, and that is incorrect, but 30% of the trade-in wheat. That's an essential distinction because China and India are large producers of wheat, but because of their huge populations, they consume a lot of what they produce, so they don't contribute to trade, which impacts prices. When you take that wheat off the market, wheat prices go up. It affects us in North America, even if we're not eating Ukrainian wheat because the world price of wheat goes up. Anyone buying wheat must pay a higher price, or they'll lose the opportunity to buy it. Life gets more expensive if you are a customer in North Africa or the Middle East, you may have wheat and food shortages.

For us in North America, it means wheat prices are going up. Here in Canada, we've seen bread increase in price as a direct result and other wheat-based products like flour.

The second impact is Russia and Ukraine are also significant producers and exporters of fertilizer. So with that not flowing, we see dramatic increases in the price of fertilizer. The cost of producing food, not just wheat but across the board, is increasing.

The final thing is Russia is a significant exporter of petroleum products. That's raising the cost of not just producing food but also distributing food. That impacts across the board.”

Ukraine and Russia Food Fallout

“The war doesn't look like a short-term thing. Even if the war were to end tomorrow, unfortunately, it doesn't look like that will happen. We've got disruption in production, which will affect yields as we get through this fall, but we've also got significant damage to the export infrastructure in Ukraine that will take some time to rebuild.

Railways have been damaged; shipyards have been damaged, all those things. It's not something that we will be able to change with the snap of a finger. It's not just getting beyond that little bit of the crop that was influenced by frost.”

In alignment with Dr. Van Massow’s comments, a recent article put out by NPR notes that Ukraine is one of the biggest producers of wheat, corn, and sunflower oil, and the war has wreaked havoc on the so-called "breadbasket of Europe." Ukraine and Russia together account for over a quarter of the world's wheat exports. Ukraine's Ministry of Agriculture now says that 30% of the country's farmland is occupied or unsafe.

In addition, there have been several environmental conditions over the last few years influencing the planet's ability to produce high yields in all areas of food.

Links to Perspectives:
Scientists, Consumers, Farmers

“The impact of drought remains to be seen. In some parts of Western Canada, I know they were really worried over the winter, that it was still dry, and have gotten some rain or some snow in the spring, which increases moisture. So, things are looking a little better, but yields were down in parts of the U.S. It's hard for me to look in a crystal ball and say what will happen there. We'll see some of these supply chain disruptions decrease over time. We'll get some relief there. It depends if we will be blessed with rain or not to be able to see some relief in the fall. I'm not expecting food prices to decrease much before 2023 and potentially beyond that.”

Cows and Pollution

Will Plant-Based Food Save The Planet From Climate Change?

“Plant-based eating isn't necessarily going to cost us any less. So it's not going to provide us relief from these increasing prices because the evidence, at least here in Canada, is that plant-based alternatives are going up at the same rate as the animal-based protein products. It's not about to provide us relief from price increases. We've had some areas of drought as well. We have had issues with beef, and with the cost of feed for chickens, hogs, and other things, we've also seen yield reductions on lentils and peas.

We must make some adjustments. I think that there is a real opportunity to diversify our diet. Most North Americans aren't ready to go entirely plant-based, but I think where there's a real opportunity is to have an increased diversification in their diet. So rather than saying you should never eat meat, chicken, or pork again, we will say things like, perhaps you should eat meat less. It gives you a more interesting and varied diet. Depending on the circumstances and what you're eating, it has the potential to provide some emissions relief.”

Is It Likely That We Are Going To Get The General Global Population To Stop Eating Meat?

“It's going to be tough to achieve. Cars are much bigger emitters than agriculture generally or animal agriculture specifically. India and China are much bigger emitters than we are in North America. The truth is we're going to deal with these issues incrementally, and we all have a role to play. Farmers are looking at ways to reduce emissions from livestock. We're seeing things like feeding cattle different things, producing cattle in different ways, rather than more pasture-based, and breeding differently.

We're seeing a rise in cellular agriculture where we're seeing lab-grown meats or fermentation products that will produce food in different ways. I think that the answer is yes to all of these things that will continue to allow us to make progress, but hanging our hat on one is dangerous. The short answer is, yes, we should all be eating a little bit more plant-based, but if that's the only thing we do, we won't deal with the fundamentally more significant challenges that we have as a civilization.”

Are Cows Contributing To Global Warming, And If So, How?

“I'm an economist, not an animal scientist, but I've talked to many people. I'm not going to give you a definitive answer that cattle aren't as big a contributor to global warming as some people will say and not as small as others will say. Do they contribute to global warming? Yes. Is it 70%? Is it 5%? I don't know the answer to that. Is it probably much closer to 5% than 70%? I know that it depends on how you produce that beef; it depends on what that animal's eating. It depends on what kind of system it's in; all those things matter.

If you look back hundreds of years, most of the Western plains of Canada and the United States were covered with bison. They fed the Aboriginal communities and roamed and ate grass. The problem is that natural grasslands are now gone to produce crops. So, a lot of the carbon that could be sequestered there isn't, so should we be counting the carbon sequestration on grazing lands? I'm raising a bunch of the issues that have been introduced to me. Is some of the beef we're eating contributing to greenhouse gas emissions? Yes. How much of that?

I will let the scientists argue about that. Should we stop eating beef? The answer is probably that's going to be tough to do. Probably no. Should we be paying attention to how our beef is raised? Yes.

I also think that we’ll be eating less beef for a variety of reasons in 20 years. So, diversify your diet, eat more plant-based, find ways to think about how your beef is produced, and pay attention to the research as it comes forward. We'll see improvements on several different fronts as we go forward. If we decided to go to zero beef, cattle are like humans; they're mammals they don't live forever. We wouldn't be able to stop eating beef tomorrow, but if, as a civilization, we said, we weren't going to eat it anymore. Over several years, we could wane things down and not have domesticated animals anymore. I don't think that's where we're going to go. For many reasons, I think we do need to pay attention to lessening the footprint of the animals we eat and diversifying our diet.”

Food and Cultural Exchange Benefits

How Will Future Changes In Food Change Cultures?

“Before COVID here in Canada, we spent somewhere between 35 and 40% of our money on food prepared outside the home. In fact, in the U.S., it was upwards of 50%. The role of restaurants in letting us experience a broader range of foods and flavors, leading us to experiment more broadly, has been profoundly important.

Internally in our country, with some of the divisions and polarization, we're seeing, I think the exchange and the sharing of food can be an awesome way to increase understanding and broaden your perspective.

If we look at the food experiences that other people have had, particularly people who don't have incomes as high as we do in North America. Also, the availability of food and the variety of food; notwithstanding the current price increases, Canada and the U.S. are the two countries that spend the lowest proportion of their income on food. We're lucky.

If, for no other reason than to increase understanding, exchange, and sharing meals with a broader range of people, it could be a profoundly positive thing. African countries have been eating insects for millennia because there hasn't been an abundance, and it is one of the options.

In India, for religious reasons, one of the ways of getting protein since Hindus don't eat any bovine meat is by creating delicious, healthy foods from pulses. Canada exports a ton of pulses from Western Canada to Asian countries. And that's another place where we could learn to appreciate, culturally, but also from a health and nutrition perspective, different ways of preparing pulses. We could look to Africa to say yes; insects are becoming an option. From a saving the world perspective, I think there is a real opportunity for us to better understand each other, appreciate what we eat, and maybe do some good for both nutrition and the climate.”

What Role Will Technology Play In Our Food In The Future?

“Like the rest of our lives, technology will fundamentally change the food system, and we're seeing it right now. We're seeing it at the farm level, where we have autonomous tractors that can go and plant harvest without a person sitting on them. You'll have a person with a smartphone who will get a notification if there's an issue. We have robotic milking for dairies, a much bigger adoption here in Canada than in the U.S., where the cow chooses to walk up to this machine, which then automatically milks her when she feels like she'd like to. That helps us deal with the problem of labor availability.

During COVID, we saw big meat processing plants shut down because of outbreaks, and we will see increased automation. Now, some automation is challenging in processing and primary production because of the variability; not all animals are the same size. If you're using a robot to build a car, every single one of those cars, the robot goes and puts the bolt in the same place every time; if you're doing it on a beef carcass as an example, that’s where that line is to cut that muscle off isn't in the identical place every time. The technology is tougher, but we're getting there.

We don't pay people in the food system enough that goes from migrant farm labor to people working in the kitchen of the restaurant, and we're having trouble getting people to do it. So that might not only reduce the requirement for manpower but also change the type of people you'll need; people who are much more technically adept.”

Explain How Soil Is In Danger.

“We have not managed our soil as well as we should have over the past 50 or a hundred years as we've intensified agriculture. As we learn more, as we understand it better, there are things that we can and should do to improve the health of the soil.

Soil is a dynamic ecosystem. There are lots of bacteria in there, lots of tiny microbes. There are plants that grow on there, animals that live under there, and we've got this sort of delicate balance that we've disrupted in some areas of agriculture and has made our soil less productive than it can and should be. It's clear now that progressive farmers are paying attention to that and saying that we need to think about what that land will produce tomorrow and in 10 years and 20 years, not just what it will produce this year, and we need to manage it.

I teach in a business school; we need to manage it like an asset and not deplete it. We are getting better at it, and we're doing things like cover crops, we're doing stuff like smart rotations. We're getting away from the monoculture that we saw emerge as we pushed to greater and greater production. Soil is at risk. I think we understand what's at stake. I think that many people are working on things that will improve the health and productivity of the soil, and we continue to learn more. While we need to be vigilant, I don't think we need to be concerned because we understand it better every day. We're making sure that we do smart things.

In developing countries where they are trying to produce enough to eat for the year, we need to apply the research and learning we're doing in the developed world to those farms. So that we raise their ability to produce food today and grow food tomorrow, that we have a sustainable food production system that allows people to thrive and survive.”

How Do You Think Society Has Become a Reflection Of The Saying “You Are What You Eat”?

“If you look at the combination of the increase in convenience food and that we're spending a considerable proportion of our income on food prepared outside the home. There's some great fast food, but we tend to eat this convenience food. We've driven down the cost by cheap flavor enhancers; fat, sugar, and salt, so we're seeing less healthy outcomes.

We weigh more than we've ever weighed; as a society in North America, we have an obesity epidemic. It’s probably, killing more people than COVID. We see a reflection of the bad eating habits as a society. The reverse is also true for people, who are eating mindfully, and that's not just green smoothies. You can eat a diverse omnivore diet and be healthy if you eat mindfully, if you're conscious, if you say, I'd love a steak, but I should have some vegetables too. People who eat well are healthier, happier, and more productive.

If you put good fuel into something, you'll get good outcomes. I think that as a society, we've lost our way a little bit. I'm very conscious of food and what I need to be healthy, productive, and happy. We are what we eat. We need to think about that, or we could end up being something we didn't plan.”

About Dr. Michael Von Massow

Dr. Michael Von Massow is a professor and the OAC Chair in Food Systems Leadership at the Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics Department at the University of Guelph. His research interests include animal welfare and antibiotic use, food waste, retail and restaurant food demand, pricing, supply chain management, and value chain structure and performance. Dr. Von Massow specializes in examining how people think about food and how they make food purchase decisions. Additionally, he looks at how to meet the demands of consumers by understanding new ways to get food from the farm. Dr. Von Massow has had experience working outside the world of academia in various operations and marketing roles in the agri-food industry before he became a professor. He frequently speaks about food waste, animal welfare and shares about research projects he is leading.

When Dr. Von Massow is not teaching, you can find him writing features about the changing landscape of food production and consumption and hosting the Food Focus Podcast, which focuses on conversations and perspectives on issues of interest in the food system. His passion for animals and agriculture has made him a leading expert in the industry. He has a strong presence in the media, has written for the Globe and Mail, and is often quoted on the radio.

About the Author

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