You know something is seriously wrong with the food 

                   system  when you have to pay extra for poison free

Here is this prevailing notion that organic farming is more expensive and we need industrial agriculture and factory farms to feed the world.

I’m here to discuss some of the assumptions behind that logic,

and to share some information that leads to a very different conclusion.

We all know organic food is expensive.

This is a fact.

therefore, it's logical to assume that it's for the 1%, the foodie elites,

the rich people, and not ordinary people.

Well, that's not correct, and I will show why in a second.

It also leads us to assume that if organic food is expensive is because organic farming is costly,

which then leads us to wonder, and conclude that it's only for the 1%.

Well, those assumptions are wrong as well.

The idea that organic food is only for the rich,

And only for the 1% is a powerful one,

with huge implications for both business and policy.

And we need business innovations and policy changes in this country to support organic.

Think about it, if you are a business person or a politician,

the way to be successful is to come up with products or policies

that cater not to the 1% but to ordinary people.

And so we need policymakers to recognize that organic food is not just for the 1%,

it's for everybody, it's for ordinary Canadians.

And the first step in that change is to change that perception.

So, who is buying this expensive organic food?

according to a report published by the Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA).

The organic industry had a 3.3 percent share of Canada’s food market in 2020, 

up from 2.6 percent in 2017 and 1.7 percent in 2012.

Two-thirds of Canadians now buy organic food every week.

Some of them might have only bought a single organic product,

there is a subset of these so-called devoted organic shoppers,

that represent the vast majority of all organic food consumption in this country.

These so-called foodies are not 1%,

Now let's look at these elite foodies.

what does the elite foodie look like?

two out of five of them have an annual household income

of fewer than 60,000 dollars.

One out of five has an annual household income

less than 40,000 dollars.

In every respect,

the foodie elite who are buying organic is the average ordinary Canadians.

and they're already buying organic despite how expensive it is.

Just imagine how many more Canadians would be buying organic food

if it wasn't so damn expensive.

Well, we know some of the answers to that.

Walmart asked its consumers and found that 91% of them would be buying organic.

So, why is organic food so expensive?

It must be because organic farming is more expensive, right?

That is not true; organic farming saves a lot of money

Not a lot of very expensive inputs.

Fossil fuel is expensive.

Fertilizers are incredibly expensive.

The chemicals, that are used by factory farms.

These are very expensive.

not just their externalized costs,

but their actual dollar costs are very high.

Well, so maybe organic farming saves money but perhaps it produces less food.

That's not necessarily true either.

This is not a blanket statement,

it varies by crop and region,

but there are a lot of ways in which, when done right,

organic sustainable farming can produce more food.

Growing multiple crops at the same time, increasing the revenue of the land.

Exploiting natural synergies.

You must be thinking: "Well, great, but industrial agriculture, for all of its ills,

surely at least it's more efficient, right?"

I would say that it has the illusion of efficiency,

and it's a short-lived one.

For example, think about the topsoil.

topsoil, is perhaps the single, greatest national treasure any country possesses,

this rich topsoil, is like a bank account that we're drawing on every year.

Withdrawing money and not putting it back in.

That's not efficient.

It's inefficient and unsustainable.

Similarly, the way we treat nutrients.

Nutrients are supposed to come from the soil,

go through the body of a plant, into the body of an animal,

and back into the soil.

We all learned that in high school.

And that's not how the vast majority of North American agriculture works today.

Instead, we're mining minerals in China, shipping them across the Pacific,

spraying them on the fields,

only to have them wash off into the waterways,

and end up in dead zones, and places like the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.

that's not efficient, it's incredibly wasteful.

Not just ecologically, but economically.

And all of this to increase the yield of corn and soy.

Crops that humans don't even actually eat.

We're maximizing the yield per acre of corn and soy,

yet the vast majority of our farmland does not feed humans.

It's either used to create ethanol or to feed livestock.

about less than 10% of the corn crop in this country

goes to feed humans.

is This the system that is supposed to feed the world?

Well, it's not feeding the world today.

If you measure, the right way to measure productivity in agriculture

is not the yield of corn per acre or soy per acre but the yield of human food per acre.

And when you measure how much human food is produced per acre,

We are not a leader.

We're not even average.

We're behind the world average,

and we're behind countries like India and China,

which are making a much better job of feeding the world population than we are.

So, if you were smart, we would realize what's really behind that status

the fact is that these other countries consume less meat.

And, so, who is going to produce all the increasing appetite for pork in China,

And surely, North American industrial agriculture and factory farms

are going to step forward to supply all the meat.

Well, I'm not sure that's true either.

The leading exporter of pork in the world today is Denmark.

Denmark is a country that has for many years banned the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics in livestock.

One of the most disgusting and reckless practices of American factory farms

has been banned in Denmark,

yet Denmark has continued to maintain high yields and low prices for their pork

and is the number one exporter of pork to places like China.

Ironically, China has recently banned pork imports

from several U.S. pork producers because of the use of antibiotics.

The real question though is:

What's the most efficient way to produce food that is going to feed 9 billion mouths in near future? 

The answer is it's not a slam dunk

Now, the truly more efficient way to feed humans is to use that land

to produce crops that people eat,

Well, the answer is organic and sustainable agriculture.

Chipotle, which is the closest we have to a fast fast-food organic company,

is the fastest-growing food company of the past decade.

And, more broadly, organic cropland in Canada. has grown tremendously,

So, organic saves money and is less expensive,

It can produce as much or more food is more profitable and is scaling.

Then, why is organic food so expensive?

And the answer is that the demand for organic food is growing even faster.

“There is never enough organic products produced in Canada to (meet) the demand that we have,” 

The organic cropland growing is still a drop in the bucket, and it pales compared to the surge in demand for organic sustainable food in this country.

For example, in 2016, 62% of all organic farms were in three provinces: Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. The percentage of organic farms also varies by province. In 2016, they accounted for 4.4% of farms in Quebec and 3.1% of farms in British Columbia but were less well represented elsewhere, 

The total amount of organic cropland in Canada is about 1% of this country's agricultural land.

The total amount of consumption of organic food is between 4 and 5%,

and that does not even reflect the total demand.

That's how much has been consumed.

Three out of every five Canadians is a devoted organic shopper.

and 91% of Walmart customers say

they would be interested in buying organic food.

The demand that we need to satisfy is not just that 5%.

But you might wonder where is that 4 or 5% of organic food comes from if not from our cropland.

It's being imported.

  And where is organic food growing on this planet?

In developing countries.

80% of the certified organic farmers are in developing countries.

The country with the most organic farmers in India.

So, the poor countries of the world are feeding the food

that the majority of want to eat.

So, I think we should stop worrying so much about feeding the world,

and focus a little bit more on feeding ourselves.

The solution to this is relatively simple.

We need organic sustainably managed cropland in this country

to increase dramatically, to catch up with the enormous demand.

we need both policy change and more business innovation

to accelerate the expansion of sustainable organic agriculture in Canada.