Producers not getting rich off high food prices, says union

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Ryan Dahlman

By Nathan Reiter
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

While the prices of groceries have gone up, the National Farmers Union (NFU) is pointing the finger at corporations.

James Hannay, a policy assistant with the NFU, says a lot of the rising price in food cost has been going back to corporations while farmers have not been able to increase the price of their goods at the same rate as food price inflation.

“We were interested in this because of the food pricing place that Canadians consumers started to notice around the start of the pandemic, but more specifically around 2022 and 2023. Last year, there was a grassroots boycott into Loblaw’s and their affiliated stores. The Retail Council of Canada, who represents a lot of the grocery stores, blamed food price increases on rising input prices for farmers. If that’s true, then farmers should be able to sell their products for a higher price, they should be able to pass costs onto grocers, and then they would pass costs on to consumers. That has not been the case.”

According to information from the Competition Bureau of Canada, five grocers make up 76 per cent of the market share. Those five companies consist of Loblaw (29 per cent), Sobeys (21 per cent), Metro (11 per cent), Costco (11 per cent) and Walmart (eight per cent).

Hannay says bringing in more competition through another vendor would not be feasible at the moment. 

“I don’t know if bringing another grocer in is possible unless there is government support for it and I’m not sure that would be a very popular adventure either. One of the things that we’ve been focusing on more is on the farmers’ side of prices and to get better value for farmers for farm products. The solution that we’ve been proposing is to bring back collective marketing institutions to give farmers more bargaining power against these ever growing and already massive food processors or traders.”

With tariffs being a major talking point in Canadian foreign policy with U.S. President Donald Trump, Hannay says companies may be able to use them to their advantage against consumers and farmers.

“I think it has the potential to, and I don’t think it’ll happen the way many people are expecting. They will be able to effectively pass on any costs they have to farmers for incurring that, and if they’re trading between themselves or their subsidiaries in Canada and the U.S., they’re able to pass along costs in a different way when they’re trading between themselves and their subsidiaries over borders. I think there’s an opportunity for corporations to build a profit off of tariffs that would affect farmers.”