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23: Measuring What Matters: Transforming Canada's Agri-Food System
Measuring What Matters: Transforming Canada’s Agri-Food System
What does a resilient agri-food system actually look like — and how would we know if we were building one?
In this Future Herd panel episode, guest host Jen MacTavish brings three previous guests back to the table for a wide-ranging conversation on food resilience, food waste, infrastructure, capital, policy, and the measurements that shape Canada’s agri-food future.
The discussion features Camden Lawrence of First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario, Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, and Tyler McCann, Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Together, they explore the gap between producing food and building a system capable of feeding people reliably, affordably, and with less waste.
The conversation begins with a deceptively simple question: what does resilience mean in agri-food? For Camden, resilience means producing more food closer to home, while also building the processing, storage, transportation, and community infrastructure needed to keep value local. For Lori, resilience requires confronting the scale of food waste in Canada and treating prevention as central to any serious food strategy. For Tyler, resilience means a system that can absorb shocks, maintain its core function, and recover without losing sight of the people it is meant to serve.
From there, the panel moves into the “messy middle” of the food system: cold storage, logistics, transportation, data, processing, and the infrastructure that often determines whether food reaches people or becomes waste. The conversation also wrestles with capital access, especially for First Nations communities and new farmers, and asks whether Canada’s food policy frameworks are ready to support the kinds of experimentation and risk-taking the moment demands.
A recurring theme throughout the episode is measurement. What we measure determines what we see. Food waste was long treated as a cost of doing business until organizations like Second Harvest helped make it visible. Once waste can be measured, it can be managed, prevented, redirected, and understood as an economic, environmental, and social problem. But the panel also warns that measurement must be consistent, useful, and tied to action.
The episode closes with a practical challenge for the sector: stop waiting for perfect conditions. Some problems need study, but others need movement. Policy, business, and community leaders may need to become more willing to try, learn, correct, and continue.
GuestsJen MacTavish
Guest host for this Future Herd panel discussion.
Camden Lawrence
First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario. Camden brings a perspective rooted in First Nations agriculture, access to capital, community food systems, and the opportunity to build food production capacity in Indigenous communities.
Lori Nikkel
CEO of Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization. Lori speaks to the scale of food waste, the importance of food rescue and prevention, and the need for better data across the food system.
Tyler McCann
Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Tyler brings a policy lens to resilience, infrastructure, food affordability, and the challenge of designing systems that can respond to shocks.
Key ThemesResilience requires more than emergency response
The panel explores resilience as the capacity to prepare, respond, recover, and adapt. In agri-food, that means thinking beyond crisis management toward systems that can keep functioning through climate disruption, trade volatility, disease outbreaks, supply chain shocks, and affordability pressures.
Food waste is a resilience issue
Lori argues that Canada cannot build a resilient food system while wasting so much food. Food waste prevention, rescue, redistribution, and measurement need to be part of any serious food security strategy.
The “messy middle” matters
Cold storage, transportation, processing, warehousing, data systems, and logistics often determine whether food stays in the system or falls out of it. These less visible parts of the supply chain are essential to resilience.
Capital shapes who gets to farm
Camden highlights the challenge of financing farms and agri-food infrastructure, especially when startup costs can reach millions of dollars and agricultural lending does not behave like ordinary commercial borrowing. Longer amortization, lower interest rates, and better capital access could help more people and communities enter the sector.
Land ownership is not the only path
The conversation points to emerging models where farmers rent land, build local agreements, or focus on equipment and market relationships rather than land ownership. This opens up new ways to think about farm entry, especially for younger and first-generation farmers.
Food systems need better knowledge transfer
Agriculture faces a generational knowledge gap. Camden describes communities where older farmers hold practical knowledge that younger people urgently need. The question becomes how to move expertise from elders and experienced producers into the hands of new entrants.
Policy needs more courage
Tyler challenges the tendency to over-study problems or pilot every change before acting. Sometimes the sector can move, test, adjust, and correct course without waiting for perfect certainty.
The farm gate is too narrow a boundary
The episode pushes against the idea that agri-food policy ends at production. Food has to move through many hands, systems, and institutions before it reaches people. A stronger food system requires collaboration across agriculture, food rescue, processing, retail, policy, community organizations, and consumers.
Episode Flow / Approximate Chapters00:00 — Introduction
Jen McTavish introduces the panel and frames the conversation around resilience in Canada’s agri-food system.
00:51 — What does a resilient agri-food sector look like?
Camden, Lori, and Tyler offer different definitions of resilience, from local production and processing to waste prevention and shock recovery.
05:22 — Food waste as an urgent gap
Lori’s work at Second Harvest anchors a discussion about how waste prevention belongs at the centre of food resilience.
08:27 — The messy middle of the supply chain
The panel turns to infrastructure, cold storage, transportation, data, and the practical systems needed to move food effectively.
11:18 — National food security strategy and policy gaps
The conversation looks at government commitments and asks whether current strategies are enough to move the needle.
15:05 — Capital, lending, and farm viability
Camden explains why access to capital is one of the biggest barriers to building farms, infrastructure, and food production capacity.
17:42 — Rethinking the economics of farming
The panel explores whether there are different ways to finance food production and support people who want to farm.
24:55 — Diversity in agriculture
The conversation turns to diversified farming, changing business models, and whether the current system can support more nimble forms of production.
27:34 — Measuring complexity
Jesse joins the conversation to reflect on measurement, chaos, complexity, and the double-edged nature of quantifying food systems.
36:44 — Policy frameworks and risk
The panel discusses Canada’s agricultural policy process and the need to bring more voices and more creativity into policy design.
49:33 — “We can just fix things”
Tyler argues that some problems require action more than another pilot project.
51:52 — What should policymakers just do?
Each guest identifies practical priorities, from First Nations agricultural capital to logistics, food waste prevention, and policy courage.
Listener TakeawaysA resilient food system is built through infrastructure, capital, knowledge, and coordination — not production alone.
Food waste is one of Canada’s clearest opportunities for immediate improvement, especially when prevention and redistribution are treated as economic tools rather than charitable afterthoughts.
First Nations agriculture deserves greater investment, not only as community food security, but as a major opportunity for leadership, production, and economic development.
Better measurement can reveal hidden problems, but measurement only matters when it leads to action.
Canada’s agri-food future will require more collaboration across sectors, more comfort with experimentation, and a stronger willingness to act before every answer is perfectly settled.
View all episodes
By Metaviews Media Management Ltd.Measuring What Matters: Transforming Canada’s Agri-Food System
What does a resilient agri-food system actually look like — and how would we know if we were building one?
In this Future Herd panel episode, guest host Jen MacTavish brings three previous guests back to the table for a wide-ranging conversation on food resilience, food waste, infrastructure, capital, policy, and the measurements that shape Canada’s agri-food future.
The discussion features Camden Lawrence of First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario, Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, and Tyler McCann, Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Together, they explore the gap between producing food and building a system capable of feeding people reliably, affordably, and with less waste.
The conversation begins with a deceptively simple question: what does resilience mean in agri-food? For Camden, resilience means producing more food closer to home, while also building the processing, storage, transportation, and community infrastructure needed to keep value local. For Lori, resilience requires confronting the scale of food waste in Canada and treating prevention as central to any serious food strategy. For Tyler, resilience means a system that can absorb shocks, maintain its core function, and recover without losing sight of the people it is meant to serve.
From there, the panel moves into the “messy middle” of the food system: cold storage, logistics, transportation, data, processing, and the infrastructure that often determines whether food reaches people or becomes waste. The conversation also wrestles with capital access, especially for First Nations communities and new farmers, and asks whether Canada’s food policy frameworks are ready to support the kinds of experimentation and risk-taking the moment demands.
A recurring theme throughout the episode is measurement. What we measure determines what we see. Food waste was long treated as a cost of doing business until organizations like Second Harvest helped make it visible. Once waste can be measured, it can be managed, prevented, redirected, and understood as an economic, environmental, and social problem. But the panel also warns that measurement must be consistent, useful, and tied to action.
The episode closes with a practical challenge for the sector: stop waiting for perfect conditions. Some problems need study, but others need movement. Policy, business, and community leaders may need to become more willing to try, learn, correct, and continue.
GuestsJen MacTavish
Guest host for this Future Herd panel discussion.
Camden Lawrence
First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario. Camden brings a perspective rooted in First Nations agriculture, access to capital, community food systems, and the opportunity to build food production capacity in Indigenous communities.
Lori Nikkel
CEO of Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization. Lori speaks to the scale of food waste, the importance of food rescue and prevention, and the need for better data across the food system.
Tyler McCann
Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Tyler brings a policy lens to resilience, infrastructure, food affordability, and the challenge of designing systems that can respond to shocks.
Key ThemesResilience requires more than emergency response
The panel explores resilience as the capacity to prepare, respond, recover, and adapt. In agri-food, that means thinking beyond crisis management toward systems that can keep functioning through climate disruption, trade volatility, disease outbreaks, supply chain shocks, and affordability pressures.
Food waste is a resilience issue
Lori argues that Canada cannot build a resilient food system while wasting so much food. Food waste prevention, rescue, redistribution, and measurement need to be part of any serious food security strategy.
The “messy middle” matters
Cold storage, transportation, processing, warehousing, data systems, and logistics often determine whether food stays in the system or falls out of it. These less visible parts of the supply chain are essential to resilience.
Capital shapes who gets to farm
Camden highlights the challenge of financing farms and agri-food infrastructure, especially when startup costs can reach millions of dollars and agricultural lending does not behave like ordinary commercial borrowing. Longer amortization, lower interest rates, and better capital access could help more people and communities enter the sector.
Land ownership is not the only path
The conversation points to emerging models where farmers rent land, build local agreements, or focus on equipment and market relationships rather than land ownership. This opens up new ways to think about farm entry, especially for younger and first-generation farmers.
Food systems need better knowledge transfer
Agriculture faces a generational knowledge gap. Camden describes communities where older farmers hold practical knowledge that younger people urgently need. The question becomes how to move expertise from elders and experienced producers into the hands of new entrants.
Policy needs more courage
Tyler challenges the tendency to over-study problems or pilot every change before acting. Sometimes the sector can move, test, adjust, and correct course without waiting for perfect certainty.
The farm gate is too narrow a boundary
The episode pushes against the idea that agri-food policy ends at production. Food has to move through many hands, systems, and institutions before it reaches people. A stronger food system requires collaboration across agriculture, food rescue, processing, retail, policy, community organizations, and consumers.
Episode Flow / Approximate Chapters00:00 — Introduction
Jen McTavish introduces the panel and frames the conversation around resilience in Canada’s agri-food system.
00:51 — What does a resilient agri-food sector look like?
Camden, Lori, and Tyler offer different definitions of resilience, from local production and processing to waste prevention and shock recovery.
05:22 — Food waste as an urgent gap
Lori’s work at Second Harvest anchors a discussion about how waste prevention belongs at the centre of food resilience.
08:27 — The messy middle of the supply chain
The panel turns to infrastructure, cold storage, transportation, data, and the practical systems needed to move food effectively.
11:18 — National food security strategy and policy gaps
The conversation looks at government commitments and asks whether current strategies are enough to move the needle.
15:05 — Capital, lending, and farm viability
Camden explains why access to capital is one of the biggest barriers to building farms, infrastructure, and food production capacity.
17:42 — Rethinking the economics of farming
The panel explores whether there are different ways to finance food production and support people who want to farm.
24:55 — Diversity in agriculture
The conversation turns to diversified farming, changing business models, and whether the current system can support more nimble forms of production.
27:34 — Measuring complexity
Jesse joins the conversation to reflect on measurement, chaos, complexity, and the double-edged nature of quantifying food systems.
36:44 — Policy frameworks and risk
The panel discusses Canada’s agricultural policy process and the need to bring more voices and more creativity into policy design.
49:33 — “We can just fix things”
Tyler argues that some problems require action more than another pilot project.
51:52 — What should policymakers just do?
Each guest identifies practical priorities, from First Nations agricultural capital to logistics, food waste prevention, and policy courage.
Listener TakeawaysA resilient food system is built through infrastructure, capital, knowledge, and coordination — not production alone.
Food waste is one of Canada’s clearest opportunities for immediate improvement, especially when prevention and redistribution are treated as economic tools rather than charitable afterthoughts.
First Nations agriculture deserves greater investment, not only as community food security, but as a major opportunity for leadership, production, and economic development.
Better measurement can reveal hidden problems, but measurement only matters when it leads to action.
Canada’s agri-food future will require more collaboration across sectors, more comfort with experimentation, and a stronger willingness to act before every answer is perfectly settled.