On May 8, 2012, MLI authors Kate Stiefelmeyer and Larry Martin appeared before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry to discuss their MLI study, Canadian Agriculture and Food: A Growing Hunger for Change, released in October 2011.
The Committee focused on research and innovation efforts in the agricultural sector and invited Stiefelmeyer and Martin as expert witnesses to present the findings of their study.
A webcast of the Committee meeting can be found here.
In Canadian Agriculture and Food: A Growing Hunger for Change, Martin and Stiefelmeyer argue that Canada is uniquely positioned to benefit from the increasing demand for food due to our vast tracts of arable land, abundant water, infrastructure, and long experience in agriculture. However, Canadian agriculture and agri-food sector is not keeping pace. They outline several factors that contribute to Canada’s poor performance and conclude that many of our laws and regulations are sadly out of date, “reflecting a mistaken belief that agriculture and food processing are industries of the past, not the future.” They argue that, “Canada’s potential as a food superpower can be unleashed by removing the barriers erected by poor policy.”
