CANADA 2020: IS CANADA’S FOOD REPUTATION A STRATEGIC PRIORITY OR NOT?
Canada’s agri-food system has built a brand globally as a trusted and sustainable food leader. Other countries are aspiring to claim this space as well. So, as a part of ensuring that Canada is positioned to maintain a leadership position, TrustBIX along with 600 other Agri-Food companies played a leading role in formulating three priorities — the basis for a new “Compact” between government, the agri-food sector, and adjacent sectors in Canada:
People — Is about ensuring diverse voice and systems-thinking to influence our governance of the agri-food business. At TrustBIX, we help champion systems-level thinking through our participation in the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB). This group of stakeholders came together to create the world’s first sustainable beef chain of custody. To go beyond this, TrustBIX is fostering global discussions using the Challenge Dialog System ®, which started in Calgary in June 2019 and will continue in planned meetings at the Globe 2020 conference in Vancouver, Canada in February 2020.
Policy — Is about ensuring the government creates an attractive environment for investment and enables market access for agri-food exports around the world. TrustBIX’s ability to integrate professional services and technology solutions to create an end-to-end chain of custody solutions so that processors and value-added activity in Canada can leverage trade agreements and market access.
Metrics — Many claims support Canada’s Food Brand today: (Safe, Sustainable, Reliably-supplied, Nutritious). TrustBIX’s end-to-end solutions can verify the attribute-based marketing claims we as Canadians want to make and associate with our national Food Brand. We agree that an essential feature of the New Compact involves bringing together disparate sources of data to facilitate the following activities:
a) Collaboration – with Academic institutes on best on-farm or supply chain practices, through the application of our world-class capabilities in Artificial intelligence and machine learning. TrustBIX has been honoured to work alongside various colleges and universities across Canada on both this Food Brand Project as well as in the Canadian AgriFood and Automation Intelligence Network (CAAIN). This initiative brought together 60 like-minded agri-food companies that have come together to innovate across the agri-food supply chain.
b) Communication – making it easy to access claims and food history at ports-of-entry for Canadian exports, or for the end, consumers motivated to buy food based on the value-added attribute. Shareholders and investors monitoring the performance of corporate ESG programs, and who value companies that have set science-based targets, will also benefit from a compilation of data across supply chains.
TrustBIX has been privileged to work as one of the National Forum members contributing to the Canada Food Brand discussion. We recognize now that we have a role to play along with other Canadian agri-food companies to sustain and enhance Canada’s Food Brand, and we are already well-positioned to contribute positively to this narrative.
