A few weeks separated Prime Minister Mark Carney’s well-received speech at Davos from the publication of Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS). The strategy’s “Build-Partner-Buy” framework identifies 10 sovereign capacities Canada must prioritize. Surprisingly, food didn’t make the cut.

Canada is one of the world’s largest food exporters, and trade agreements exist to guarantee market access, but these assurances fall short if we lose the capacity to cultivate our lands, breed livestock, and feed our citizens. By leaving food out of the DIS, Canada has left strategic autonomy over the food system unexamined and unprotected.

Food system beholden to foreign inputs

Like the military, Canada’s agrifood sector is largely dependent on imports for inputs, equipment, and digital technologies. More than 80 per cent of active antibiotic ingredients originate from China and India, vital for both human and animal health. Pesticides are predominantly manufactured in India, China, the United States, Germany, and Japan. Canada holds a genuine global advantage in nitrogen and potash through the company Nutrien, but relies on China, Russia and Morocco for phosphorus, and input distribution remains vulnerable to infrastructure disruption, a demonstrated weakness.

Canada is also heavily reliant on imported large-scale machinery. A short-line manufacturing sector exists, but unresolved interoperability questions limit how effectively it can fill that gap. The dependency runs deeper than hardware: since 2024, major equipment........

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