The 2025 edition of Canada’s Food Price Report predicts that consumers will be paying between three and five per cent more for food next year.
Stuart Smyth, a University of Saskatchewan professor of agricultural and resource economics, is part of the team that compiles the report. He says the price fluctuation isn’t ideal, but it’s a better rate than the ones projected for both 2022 and 2023.
“It’s significantly down from the previous two years. The previous two years it was in a range of five to seven per cent…so three to five, it’s not great news, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.”
He says this is most likely because it has been a few years now since the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re seeing those pandemic supply chain challenges starting to be smoothed out of the system, and to go back to where we were pre-Covid.”
If you’re wondering how accurate the report’s projections are, Smyth says “We’ve been very accurate. Last year, the projection was 2.5 to 4.5, and food prices in 2024 has risen about 2.8 per cent, so falling within the range we had predicted.”
This year, the three most noticeable price jumps will be seen for meat, vegetables, and restaurant meals.
“We’ve had consistent droughts…so that’s resulted in farmers reducing the size of their herds. We’ve got fewer beef cattle now than at any time in the last 35 years. There’s less supply, so that’s driving up the price of beef, pork.”
When it comes to vegetables, Smyth explains that “So much of our fresh produce is imported from the United States, and the value of the Canadian dollar compared to the U.S. dollar has dropped about five cents since the start of 2024… So, it’s just costing us more to bring those goods into Canada.”
Restaurant meal prices are driven up by the high cost of labour, and the fact that many restaurants find it hard to stay fully staffed.
He adds that it’s projected the average family of four will spend an average of $16,800 on food for the year, up about $800 from last year.
The report’s authors, Smyth included, hope that the document will gain the attention of policy makers, in hopes that they will do all they can do decrease the cost of food.
“As an example, in the spring, the Canadian federal government changed some of the requirements to the temporary foreign worker program, making it more difficult to bring in temporary foreign workers which are essential in agriculture for planting produce, harvesting produce and vegetables.”
He says the fact that there is going to be less labour in Canada to help with production is something the federal government could change.
When asked factors play into making these predictions, Smyth replied that they “look at food prices going back as far as we’ve got data, which comes from the consumer price index. And then we are using complex computer models that are trained on this data to then make 12-month projections on the prices based on 30 years of price fluctuations and change.”
