Consumers buy local to support farms, study says

Aug 19, 2022

HALIFAX— Local food enjoys popular sentiment in Canada but not at the cash register. While consumers say they want to buy local most of the time, few Canadians actually do so when grocery shopping or eating at a restaurant. This was confirmed in a recent survey conducted by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in partnership with Angus Reid.

Very few Canadians believe local foods are better products, and only 5% of Canadians believe local foods are cheaper. Rather, the new survey found that respondents buy local food to support farmers and the economy, in that order. Supporting environmental sustainability was the third most popular reason for buying local food.

“I think the image of local food products needs work. It’s almost as if Canadians just want to do farmers and agri-food companies a favour while purchasing,” observed Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab. “Canadians clearly don’t see how local foods can provide benefits to them directly.”

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Video: EP 65 Grazing Through Drought

Welcome to the conclusion of the Getting Through Drought series, where we look at the best management practices cow-calf producers in Alberta can use to build up their resiliency against drought.

Our hope is that the series can help with the mental health issues the agriculture sector is grappling with right now. Farming and ranching are stressful businesses, but that’s brought to a whole new level when drought hits. By equipping cow-calf producers with information and words of advice from colleagues and peers in the sector on the best ways to get through a drought, things might not be as stressful in the next drought. Things might not look so bleak either.

In this final episode of the series, we are talking to Ralph Thrall of McIntyre Ranch who shares with us his experience managing grass and cows in a pretty dry part of the province.