Food security now depends on supply chain security
For decades, food security in Canada meant one thing: farm productivity. How many bushels per acre, how efficiently we move crops from field to fork. That framing was never wrong, but it is now incomplete.
The next food shock may not start with drought or crop failure. It may start when fertilizer cannot move through a shipping lane.
That scenario is no longer hypothetical. When the Iran conflict shut the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization reported tanker traffic collapsed by more than 90 per cent. Middle Eastern urea prices jumped nearly 20 per cent within a week; by mid-April, urea was up 52 per cent in the United States, and 60 per cent in Brazil. An estimated 1.5 to 3 million tonnes of fertilizer trade per month had been delayed.
This landed on Canadian farms fast. By March 20, Farm Credit Canada was offering emergency credit lines of up to $500,000 to producers hit by spiking fertilizer and energy costs. The Grain Growers of Canada welcomed the measure, but noted farmers were being asked to take on more debt. "Which is not sustainable," the organization said.
The numbers tell the story. The World Bank reported its fertilizer price index rose by more than 12 per cent in the first quarter of 2026. Nitrogen fertilizer climbed above US$850 per metric tonne in April—up 80 per cent since February.
Canada's food system has continued functioning, for now.
The deeper vulnerability is structural. Canada is a major agricultural exporter with world-class farmers, abundant land, and a globally important potash industry. But we move 75 per cent of our fertilizer by rail. A labour dispute in 2024 cost the canola sector an estimated $4-million per day in lost export revenue. These were not crop failures—they were logistics failures, with direct consequences for the food economy. A record yield means little if the crop cannot move. Export strength is not the same as systemic resilience.
What Canada should do
First, build a real-time agri-food supply chain risk dashboard that connects fertilizer availability, fuel prices, rail capacity, shipping disruptions, and soil conditions in one place. Statistics Canada's Farm Input Price Index provides a quarterly price indicator, but in a world of cascading shocks, quarterly data cannot warn us in time.
Second, build strategic redundancy into critical agricultural inputs. Efficiency has long driven global supply chains and made food cheaper, but it also removed the slack. Resilience means diversified fertilizer sources, stronger domestic input capacity, greater use of recovered nutrients, and contingency planning for rail and port disruptions.
Third, reframe precision agriculture as a supply chain resilience tool. Farm Credit Canada projects farmers could spend $22.5-billion on crop inputs in 2026—with fertilizer alone approaching $10-billion. Better soil testing and digital nutrient planning can cut unnecessary input use without sacrificing yield. In a volatile market, smarter application is a financial buffer.
Fourth, treat food security as national security. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's 2026–27 plan links supply chain resilience to food system strength. That framing should extend beyond export markets to the capacity to keep producing food when the world is unstable.
For most of the 20th century, agricultural policy asked farmers to produce more. That goal remains essential. But producing more means little if the systems behind production, including rail, ports, energy, fertilizer, and soil data, are exposed to shocks that are now becoming routine.
The soil still matters. Farmers still matter the most. But the future of food will also be decided in shipping lanes, energy markets, and policy choices made in Ottawa. Canada has the scientific capacity, agricultural strength, and policy tools to lead on this. The question is whether we recognize the threat before the next crisis forces our hand.
Asim Biswas is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Digital Agriculture at the University of Guelph, and chair of the International Union of Soil Sciences Working Group on Proximal Soil Sensing.
The Hill Times