The following piece is from our sister publication, the Alberta Seed Guide.
Canadians can expect to pay five to seven per cent more for their food in 2023, data released in Canada’s Food Price Report 2023 said. The most substantial increases will be for vegetables, dairy and meat. The report also forecasted an average family of four will spend up to $16,288.41 per year on food, an increase of $1,065.60 from 2022.
“To say that it’s been a challenging year for Canadians at the grocery store would be an understatement,” Sylvain Charlebois, project lead and director of the agri-food analytics lab at Dalhousie University, said in a news release about the report. “Consumers will continue to get smarter about grocery shopping as they navigate through this so-called food inflation storm.”
The report mentioned that international events continue to affect food prices in Canada.
“The uncertainty from the ongoing Ukraine war shows no signs of ceasing and the Canadian dollar compared to the U.S. dollar has recently ranged five to seven cents lower and this has driven up the cost of all imported American products,” Stuart Smyth, University of Saskatchewan campus lead, said in the release. “Labour shortages in key sectors, such as crop harvesting, food processing, and transportation lower supply and drive-up prices.”
Canada hasn’t seen a food price increase this high for over 40 years, the report said. It was noted that if inflation comes down food price increases could be at or below five per cent.
The release noted Canada’s Food Price Report is an annual collaboration between research partners Dalhousie University, the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of British Columbia. Historical data sources, machine learning algorithms, and predictive analytics tools are used to make predictions about Canadian food prices. For the 2023 report a new forecasting model was used.
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