Worried about food prices? Investment in public infrastructure pays |
If you’ve been to the supermarket recently, you know food prices are high. Politicians looking for a fix are considering government-run grocery stores.
Toronto city council recently voted to approve a public grocery store pilot, a policy made famous by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Newly elected federal NDP leader Avi Lewis’s platform also included public supermarkets.
The idea of a government-run store might seem like an appealing political response and a simple solution. Some argue the government’s buying power could secure lower food prices.
But the idea is just that: simple. It assumes the problem is merely retail margins, ignoring many other factors that determine food prices, like what’s available for sale, how it gets there, where it’s grown, who grows it and all the other stages of production.
The infrastructure behind your produce
Instead of looking only to public supermarkets, governments need to employ a food-systems perspective and look for solutions in time-tested ways — ways that governments have already invested in infrastructure commons. One such example is the Ontario Food Terminal.
The terminal is situated north of Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway in the inner suburb of Etobicoke. It’s one of the largest wholesale food terminals in North America and the only such public facility in........