Agri-Food Risk Report Phase 2
A Message from CAPI’s Managing Director
Talking about risk has been easy in 2025 because it seems to be everywhere. The rules-based trading system and global markets have been disrupted. Domestic policy priorities have changed, and the federal government has entered an era of austerity.
The stability and fundamentals that worked in Canadian agriculture’s favour for the past two decades are not working the way they used to. For most of the year actors across the sector have known that things are bad and have been expecting them to get worse.
It is against that backdrop that CAPI undertook a series of activities- as part of its risk initiative. This included our second annual risk survey and the CAPI Exchange conference, hosted under the theme of Canadian Agri-Food in a Risky World. Furthermore, in almost every project that CAPI undertook, from innovation to conservation, the changing risk landscape and its impact on the sector came up.
In the survey, conference and dialogues, there was recognition that the status quo was no longer fit for purpose in this riskier, more challenging world. There was broad agreement that the time for change has come, that there is a need for action.
However, a year after the re-election of the US President, more than 6 months after the election of a new Canadian government and after months of talk, it is hard to see the action happening.
CAPI’s first Agri-Food Risk Report was “from Optimism to Realism,” and urged greater awareness of the significant risk and systemic challenges facing Canadian agriculture and agri-food. The report underscored that while the respondents were optimistic about the future, their responses and much of the evidence pointed to long-term, structural challenges. The report urged a more realistic assessment of the sector’s future.
The second Agri-Food Risk Report is “from Optimism to Realism … to Action.” As a think-tank, there should be little surprise that much of our focus is on public policy action, but the expectation that leadership will come from government is one of the risks facing the sector. Greater leadership from within the sector is one way to mitigate that risk. There is little doubt of the risks facing the sector. Now the challenge is to do something about them.
– Tyler McCann