News

Collaboration is a key component of moving Canada’s plant-based food, feed and ingredient sector forward. From sharing ideas, to working together to bring research and products to fruition, companies across the sector understand the value of combining forces.

I have heard it said that time speeds up the older you get. I believe that to be true. Already we are approaching the last half of 2021. Harvest is well underway across the Prairies, and already farmers and rancher’s minds are turning to winter, with hopes of lots of snow (and enough feed to see them through) to put this dry year behind us.

Canada’s plant-based food, feed and ingredients sector is growing, but it faces a barrier in reaching its full potential. In order to increase the sector’s scale of operations, it needs to quickly attract significantly more capital into the country.

Protein Industries Canada announced the Food Convergence Innovation (FCI) Canada – Food and Beverage Supply Chain Project. The FCI-Canada Project focuses on creating a national, sector-wide platform with enterprise-to-enterprise connectivity capabilities, which will help strengthen Canada’s domestic food supply chain.

Protein Industries Canada announced a partnership to help build on the use of pea and hemp in plant-based food and ingredients.

Protein Industries Canada announced a co-investment in a project that will improve data use within Canada’s agriculture and agrifood sector.

Protein Industries Canada is filling one vacant position for their Board of Directors at their Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Sept. 22, 2021.

Protein Industries Canada announced an investment into a project to develop a national strategy to improve diversity and inclusion of Indigenous groups in the Canadian agriculture and agri-food sector.

Protein Industries Canada announced a co-investment with New School Foods and Liven Proteins into the development of plant-based seafood products.

The strength of Canada’s agrifood sector is interwoven with the health of our environment. The sector relies on the environment to help maintain access to high-quality commodities and healthy workers, while also contributing to the environment’s health through increasingly ambitious sustainability goals.

The United Nations Food Systems Summit will be held in New York City in September 2021. The Summit will launch bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems. These are ambitious and important goals, and ones that Canada’s innovative agrifood sector can contribute to.

When one thinks of innovation – more specifically Canadian innovation – a few things come to mind: insulin, the telephone, the Canada Arm on the International Space Station.

For those of us in agriculture, a few more things come to mind: the adoption of GM technology, canola and zero-till.