It’s time for Canada to do more than just grow it here

“While the world is starving, Canada is still learning how to cook.” That blunt assessment from Dominic Barton, shared at FCC’s Future of Food conference in Ottawa last week, has stayed with me—especially as I heard it echoed from halfway around the world. As our team attended the Ottawa event, I was on the ground at the Canada-in-Asia Conference in Singapore, listening to global investors, food companies, and policymakers discuss the future of food.

Around the world, countries are making deliberate choices about food security and economic resilience. They’re investing in processing, ingredients, and finished food products—because they understand something fundamental: value is created not just in what you grow, but in what you make.

Canada is already a global leader in agriculture. Our farmers produce some of the highest-quality, most sustainable crops in the world. Yet too often, we export that value as whole seed—capturing it once, and watching the real economic upside be realized somewhere else.

We can do better.

When we process crops here—into ingredients and food products—we multiply their value. That shift strengthens domestic supply chains, creates skilled jobs, attracts long-term investment, and positions Canada as a strategic partner in a rapidly changing global food system. It’s also one of the most practical ways to address Canada’s productivity challenge.

This is why Protein Industries Canada is launching the Make It Here campaign.

The global demand for high-quality ingredients and food is growing. Supply chains are being rethought. Processing facilities are being built—and once they’re built, they don’t move. The question isn’t whether this investment will happen. It’s whether Canada will step up and make sure it happens here.

Making it here means owning more of our food value chain—from farm to plate. It means ensuring Canada captures its fair share of the value created from what we grow. And it means future‑proofing our economy by embedding Canadian-made ingredients into global food manufacturing in ways that are difficult to displace.

This isn’t about replacing commodities. Primary agriculture will always be foundational. This is about evolving—building on our strengths and turning them into long-term economic advantage. Ingredient manufacturing and food processing are industries of the future, and Canada has everything it takes to lead.

We grow it here.
Now it’s time to make it here.