Agriculture and Food in, and Beyond, COVID-19: Shoring-up and Strengthening a Canadian Essential Service

A human disease crisis like COVID-19 impacts the health, movement and behavior of people. Contracting the disease as well as preventing the contraction of the disease changes the way we are all conducting our personal and professional lives. The COVID-19 crisis poses a specific set of risks for Canada. Identifying these risks is step one, but step two is developing an improved focus and a debate on needs in policy and emergency planning. We at the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI) want to set out, in a preliminary fashion, some of these risks and suggest possible policy and emergency planning that needs to be implemented in the agriculture and food supply chain. We hope this will engender a sincere dialogue amongst industry, government and the not-for-profit associations that develop public policy options.