The best in the country it's democratic it's balanced uh it's thinking about animal vegetable both all dimensions of agriculture you don't have that elsewhere else where in canada you still have that stomach share mentality which is really a backward way of of thinking especially when you're looking at a consumer that is looking at value that is looking for choice that is looking for quality as well and so i think it's because i was there when the protein strategy was revealed in in in winning a few years ago i think was two years ago that approach was very strong i think and i still believe that,
I said that to the crowd in in i think it was in january 20 of 2020. one legacy to uh to covet though is how we perceive risk and this is something that is critical we've been talking about public health we've been talking about viruses we've been talking i mean for almost two years now so it's ingrained especially the younger the kids i mean the masks and everything i mean it's i have four young children and we see it uh as parents uh really kids aren't going to be reacting the same way as we did so when you think about food packaging when you think about you know how you convey information how you use technology,
With the qr codes hated the qr code when we started the pandemic had never used one and since then and ingrid just spoke about using it like you are everyone's using it they have access to information another opportunity for the industry to to again tell the story if you're a farmer a processor doesn't matter if you're out there and you have a story the qr code which was invented by the way in japan in 1994 for the car industry not the food industry the car industry was invented because we needed something else than the code the barcode to contain more data so it's all there it's always been there to kind of make the agri-food sector more attainable more real i guess and to tell the story which is often mis misleading,
I mean you guys look at social media all the time about you know genetic engineering gene editing uh pestis the use of pesticides i mean there's a lot of misinformation out there well guess what because of the pandemic i think there are better ways to connect with the public i think and we need to be more strategic about that as well and this is going to this is going to continue i think uh another thing that's happening that's quite i mean when it comes to innovation just we're just starting here uh i've been involved with some some projects related to cultured food imagine now singapore just actually made it legal to sell cultured chicken yes i'm talking about lab-grown stuff,
Yes absolutely now i'm not saying that in canada there's a lot of enthusiasm for this essentially only a section of canadians would be enthusiastic to taste lab-grown nourishment or lab-grown-made nutrition but reason about other spaces and this is why genomics ontario's story last week heartening to invest in culture and media is i think a good idea because i think in other places around the world there's not as much space as in canada there's not a there's not as much uh luxury i mean let's face it we've been blessed with a lot of land here a lot of resources great resources clean air clean energy without lots going for us we can share,
And but some in some places there's no space like singapore for example so we need to think globally about how people are going to eat and i actually think that cultured food will become legal in canada by 2025 and it's probably going to become legal in the united states before then so we got to be ready for it i think we missed the boat on proteins on vegetable proteins we're catching up now which is great but we missed the boat we should have started pick and other things about a decade ago at least so we're catching up and i think on the cultured food front we shouldn't miss that boat yet again,
And of course there is a role to play for farmers that are out there already when it comes to cultured food and uh and cellular agriculture in general so in a nutshell i'm looking at the time and i'm running out slowly and i know that ingrid wants to run a q a with uh with the audience um information consumption people are thirsty for information we've been consuming a lot of information during coven i mean people watch tv uh and so we got to think about how to convey information to the public as much as possible and consumers will be there to listen i think i was actually just visiting last week a salmon farm here in nova scotia uh a sustainable salmon farm,
And it's all sustainable it's very it's small scale it's about you know it's not nothing like clear water or cook but the facilities were unbelievably so it cost about 50 million dollars to build to produce sustainable salmon so in in other words it's not something that eats chicken and by the way salmon in aquaculture does eat chicken it's legal parts of chickens which for some people may be oh no that's not it's not natural salmon don't eat chicken in nature but at that facility it's a farm but they try to recreate the natural environment for salmon and i actually i was skeptical went to the shop bought their salmon,
And bought regular salmon and it did taste different yes less slimy uh it was incredible it was more expensive it was probably about 30 more expensive but the difference was unbelievable so there's lots of that and i think their sales actually are up about 50 in the last year alone why because people are looking for these products and they're out there on social media connecting with the public telling their story through qr codes and everything else um and the last thing i want to talk about is clean labeling uh clean labeling and what i mean by that clean leveling is that people want to know what's in their food and they want to understand what's in their food and they want to know if what they're eating is of quality and this is not going to end and i know there's been a lot of the food industry has been criticized for not coming out clean as much,
This is something that's it's going to continue there's going to be more pressure on naturalizing food we've been talking a lot about it in the last a few uh in the last decade i said i guess but now the gardening rate has gone up in in western world in canada the gardening rate is now 17 and before the pandemic it was actually 12 people are gardening more they're growing their own food and yes it could have an impact on food demand i don't think it does because people are realizing that gardening is a lot of work but at least they're aware that mother nature is not perfect that carrot that comes out the ground is not perfect all the time that tomato is not perfect all the time,
So you can see that really um food literacy has gone up in canada people are more aware of what's happening uh out in the field they're more curious they've learned more recipes they are more aware of different ingredients and that really will lead to more opportunities as we exit the pandemic i think food literacy is a good thing for kids for adults everyone and it's also good for the industry because when you're interacting with someone who actually knows what he or he he or she is if someone actually understands agriculture a little bit more not perfectly but a little bit more then that's great and one last point one last point before i go to ingrid the pet economy do not underestimate the fact that there are more pet owners,
Do you know how many new pet owners we have in canada compared to march 2020 more than three million yes and if you're a pet owner uh in in the city you will end up seeing animals very differently and this is something i just want to plan to see here because i actually do see something there canada's pet economy was very big before the pandemic but it has grown substantially since then we have more pets than kids in canada and uh and that really will impact how people will see food if they take care of an animal that and they'll start thinking about animal proteins it may actually i don't think that it's gonna make a bunch of new vegans but it will get people to think differently about you know how agriculture should treat live stock,
For example and so expectations will shift and that's something i wanted to share with you uh this afternoon so or rather this morning so on that note uh i will stop now and i think we have some time for a q a session uh since it is live i can actually talk to people so ingrid back to you all right uh currently we don't have any um questions in the q a hopefully we will have some shortly um i was just wondering about some of the things that you had talked about with the protein strategy uh your the key point that you thought um manitoba was doing right was just the whole the whole scope of it's the scope absolutely i think the scope was inclusive,
Basically when when i was there in winnipeg i guess it was last year or early last year everyone was in the room a lot of people were in the room and and that's not something i actually saw in other provinces and other parts because there seems to be you know there's some tensions and uh and i think he has a lot to do with the beyond meat factor uh beyond meat really has created this this this this friction between animal and vegetable and but now but now beyond meat is floundering i mean i think it's in you guys are aware it's in the news uh its stock price is dropping revenues are dropping it's losing money,
Now but it doesn't mean that vegetable proteins are dropping actually sales are up 15 20 steady a year there's more competition in the market and the new players in the market are absolutely bang on with their approach they bring in first of all they bring in a product with better texture and they don't compare themselves with beef or chicken or pork it's just a unique experience which is what we need for our vegetable protein and that's kind of what i saw when i read the protein strategy in manitoba maybe maybe some people don't agree but i actually was very supportive of the strategy back then so there you go good i see that john hurd has his hand raised john sure thank you ingrid,
My question is i i don't know why i've been kept out of the question room but here's my question orally what does food inflation do to the demand and prices for food products that are already premium priced and specifically i'm thinking about like organic production.
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