When we talk about the big drivers of climate change, we often go to our energy, transportation, and manufacturing systems. Yes, these are all big areas we need to tackle. But there’s another that tends to fly under our radar. Food.
Every year, Canadians create an estimated 35.5 million tonnes of food waste. Food waste not only wastes resources and money, but when disposed of improperly (i.e. in a landfill), it also creates methane emissions. Methane is a much more harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (about 25% worse!). And while some of Canada’s food waste gets composted, a lot of it doesn’t. In fact, wasted food makes up about 23% of all the waste we send to landfills, contributing 56.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mostly methane) into our atmosphere.
We need urgent action to achieve a healthy, affordable, and sustainable food supply in Canada. Growing a net-zero food system is an open-source framework designed to support the transition. With the support of Deloitte and contributions from participants across the full value chain—input providers, growers, producers, processors, and retailers, as well as actors from academia, government, and non-government organizations—we developed this framework with the aims to:
Canada has over 25 million cows and hogs, and over 155 million chickens. Together, they produce a lot of manure—and that manure produces a massive amount of methane, an especially powerful greenhouse gas.
Places such as California, Germany and Denmark have invested heavily in biodigesters to capture this methane. But Canada lags our peers in the United States and Europe.
CANZA was formed to spur action in helping Canada's agri-food sector reach net zero. Much good work is happening across the country. But we wondered why Canada has made only small steps in containing the methane gas produced by agri-food. That question launched the research behind this report.
What we learned confirms that manure is a big contributor of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and must be dealt with to achieve our net zero targets. Biodigesters are a proven technology that many countries are using successfully to contain emissions. Moreover, the use of biodigesters can unleash economic growth in multiple ways, aiding farmers, their local communities and the country as a whole. Our takeaway, as you'll read in this report, is that biodigesters are a major opportunity that is ripe for Canada to seize.
We hope you find this report insightful and helpful as you navigate net zero agri-food within your organization. If you would like to get involved in the biogas opportunity, we would love to talk with you.
This report provides an overview of CANZA’s approach to developing a Monitoring, Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system, a key pillar of the CANZA network’s Climate-Smart Farming Initiative that is working to help catalyze decarbonization activities across Canada’s agri-food value chain. It is intended to be used for sharing directions, building collaborations, and gathering ongoing input from farmers, stakeholders and technical specialists.
This report is produced as a summary companion piece to the MRV Blueprint Discussion Document published by CANZA in October 2023 which contains further technical detail.
Download the report here.