The Local Food Paradox: A Second Study of Local Food Affordability in Canada

Abstract

The price of food has been affected in recent months in response to events such as the war in Ukraine, energy costs, inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change. Indeed, supply problems, as well as the repercussions of global issues, have had an impact on grocery bills. Just between September and October 2022, the price of food increased by 11.4% and 11% year-to-year. In addition, with the pandemic, buying locally has become a key factor for some in choosing which products to consume. This second edition of the report aims to answer the question Does eating local in Quebec cost more? More precisely, our objective was to identify if local products in the food sector, especially in Quebec, were competitive in their price points compared to foods coming from other regions of the world. To answer this, we used AI and machine learning to harvest data from 99 local products and 335 comparable nonlocal products, totaling 198,990 data points and 3745 prices across six data collection dates. The results showed that a total of 25 categories displayed an advantage for the local product or a neutrality, out of a total of 45 categories identified. Our results demonstrated that 55.6% of the categories that contained the local foods analyzed were price competitive with comparable products or less expensive than them.