This past Sunday was father’s day and I found myself at a local eating establishment celebrating with others.  The local eating establishment I was in has one of the best “brunches” around.  Whether its father’s day, mother’s day or just about any other Sunday, the masses line up for bacon, waffles, eggs and hams.

It is a very good thing.  No, not necessarily the brunch, I can take it or leave it.  What’s good is that in our greater Canadian society food is both cheap and plentiful.  The local brunch is completely taken for granted.  With the world’s media headlines howling about “food inflation” and “food riots” in third world countries, Canadian consumers are blindly ignorant to it.  The growing girth around our mid sections is testament to that.

Still, with food headlines around the world catching some traction, sometimes I still have to check to see if this is Canada.  Case in point was Monday morning headlines in this week’s Globe and Mail, which was entitled, “Corn Reaches Another Record High.”

In my other career I’m paid to analyze corn prices for Ontario corn producers.  I write “Market Trends” for the Ontario Corn Producer Magazine.  Sure corn prices are a record levels and yes, its causing excitement in Ontario corn country, but when it starts getting into the Globe and Mail, its either a slow news day or another urban reporter is scrounging around again for another food/corn/biofuel story.

The plot lines in these articles are always the same.  By using corn for biofuel, poor children in the third world are dying and the cost of food is soaring.  However, much of that is folly, especially the part of about biofuel and the soaring cost of food in Canada.

Case in point is a recent report issued in the Canadian Economic Observer by Statistics Canada.  The following is a direct quote from that report.

“Overall, consumer prices for food consumed at home in Canada have risen only 1.2% in the 12 months ending in April 2008. Food prices increased 7.1% in the European Union and 5.9% in the United States during the same period.

While consumers in Canada face higher prices for bread and cereal products, they have been insulated at the checkout counter from higher overall grocery bills by stable or falling prices for most other products, the study found.

The absence of price increases for these other food products reflects factors such as the lower cost of food imports in the wake of the rising Canadian dollar, and the relatively small role that commodities play in what consumers buy.  For most food products, services contribute the bulk of the value-added for food that consumers buy”. (Canadian Economic Observer)

It’s interesting stuff, especially the facts about the small role that commodity prices play in our grocery costs.  The role of “services” and how that affects our food costs adds up too.  Simply put, that chocolate milk packaged like a cow and those bagel crisps with the snazzy description, or those “lunch roll ups” in school lunches have much more to do with your food bill than any agricultural commodity produced on a Canadian farm.

Still, the world seems intent on blaming the commodity price spike on putting ethanol in our gas tank so we can warm the planet up even faster.  That argument I’ll leave for another day, I think collectively everybody in southwestern Ontario is getting tired of it.  I would much rather concentrate on the line up at brunch for bacon and waffles.

Simply put none of us, especially me needed the three waffles I scarfed down or the handful of bacon.  However, it was so good.  I even heard a comment from another hungry Canadian in front of me that he had a new lease on life.  As he took a truckload of bacon he explained to the guy on the other side of the buffet how he had a new lease on life.  He had a heart bypass two weeks ago.  Now, it would seem it’s a food free for all.

In a nutshell, there will never be a “food crisis” in Canada.  You might read about “soaring food costs”, but at the end of the day, its like saying, “Canadian chicken can fly!”  In this country every day people line up and gorge themselves on food they don’t need for simple recreation.

So let’s put all the high food cost hype to rest.  Canadian farmers are doing their best at producing a world-class agriculture.  Any food crisis after that is simply a figment of the imagination.