Harnessing innovations to allow Canada to produce more food with fewer emission is a massive opportunity for our country. Canada’s agriculture and food industry provides 1 in 9 jobs and generated almost $150B in 2022. As such, agriculture is uniquely positioned to address Canada’s productivity gap, and investments in the sector could unlock $30B in economic opportunity. Additionally, while the sector produces approximately 10% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, food and farming systems hold enormous potential to mitigate emissions. Canadian farmlands already sequester millions of tons of carbon; properly managed they can sequester millions of tons more.
To achieve these outcomes, entrepreneurs and innovators need a pan-Canadian platform that fosters collaboration with industry, government, and communities to drive solutions from university lab to corporate launch. To address this need, SF4C will create three programs from these three major pillars.
Governance Structure
The University of Guelph is the lead institution among a large network of national partners, including node leads and co-chairs from Canada’s leading agricultural institutions. Co-directed by Dr. Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute and Dr. Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Our governance structure is designed for transparency, accountability, and strategic decision-making.
Each node is co-led by a partner member based in a different region, helping ensure diverse priorities are represented in leadership.
Partners like Zone Agtech, AG-Bio Centre, Bioenterprise Canada, Connections Silicon Valley, CFIN and CAAIN means that we are building on a foundation of innovation programming that reaches all over the country.
Collaborating with organizations such as Ontario Genomics, the Canadian Alliance for Net-Zero Agri-Food and the Deans Council for Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine means that we have access to extremely broad networks that extend beyond agri-food.”
Funders
An investment of nearly $16.3M under the Lab to Market initiative was made to support Sustainable Food Systems for Canada (SF4C) for an initial five years.
We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
