Can farmers cater to future consumers?

By Owen Roberts

Cooked a meal for your grandparents lately? Dined at an Asian restaurant? If you have, you've seen the future face of Canadian consumers. And that future isn't far away.

Canada's population is rising by about 360,000 people a year, almost three times faster than most other developed countries. That means there's great potential for food sales - provided the agri-food industry caters to the evolving population.

We're seeing the emergence of a strong ethnic component here. Between 1991 and 1996, Canada's ethnic population rose almost 15 per cent, mainly because of immigration from Hong Kong, China, the Philippines and India. Most of these immigrants' food demands are unlike anything Canadian farmers and processors have known.

As well, the general population - much like the farm population - is rapidly greying. By 2016, the average Canadian will be 40 years old. The movement toward healthy food choices will be a necessity, not a fad.

It's already evident. Linda Robbins, a senior market analyst in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Food Bureau, told a recent food writers' conference in Halifax that this year's "hot" grocery store items - where retailers are seeing growth - include fish, rice, specialty milks, low-fat dairy products and vegetable-based oils (especially olive oil). What's cold? Fried chicken, donuts, muffins and hot dogs.

Consumer choices will reflect both health concerns and changing family structures. Today, only seven per cent of Canadian families comprise the stereotypical mom, dad and two kids. There are a whopping 1.1 million lone-parent families in Canada, 75 per cent of which are headed by women.

Increases in the number of single-person, lone-parent and childless-couple families have driven the size of the average Canadian household down to 2.6 people.

Too busy to marry - or stay that way. No time to have kids. No time to cook. In fact, for a lot of people, "cooking" now means combining already-prepared ingredients, heating them up and virtually inhaling them.

All this has a significant impact on what researchers study, what farmers grow, and how manufacturers package it. More people means more consumers - but consumers must be catered to. They won't buy Canadian if they think the agri-food system isn't sensitive to their needs or concerns.

"People are saying they want assurances that what they're eating is produced with total quality management," says Norris Hoag, assistant deputy minister of OMAFRA's education, research and laboratories division. "That means the partnership between farmers and processors has to be pretty tight. Farmers' customers are processors...Farmers have to zero in on that link and give processors what they need to meet consumers' demands. That's where added wealth for farmers will come from."

Hoag thinks the foundation for that partnership already exists. Canada has a unique "clean, pristine and green" standing, he says, "And that's an advantage farmers have to look at - they have to be aware they're part of the team, be receptive to processors and feed into the agenda, which is health and nutrition, safety and high quality."

They have to be ahead of the curve; they have to try to forecast who, downstream, their strategic partners will be, adds Hoag.

They can hope for more partners like Leslie Chester, vice-president of meal solutions for Nestle Canada, maker of Stouffers' frozen dinners. People on the run need convenience, making frozen dinners a hot commodity. Manufacturers see it as a vastly untapped market - for every dollar spent on frozen dinners in Canada, $60 is spent on food eaten at home but prepared away (take-out burgers, pizza, chicken, etc.). "A 50-cent McBurger is as much competition to me as Swanson's," says Chester. In fact, eat-at-home, prepared-away meals are a $16-billion market, and Stouffers wants a bigger piece of it.

Companies like Nestle's keep close tabs on the shifting Canadian population and try to anticipate how to meet its needs. It's not easy, with so many variations on the family theme. That's led the company to single-serve options, after its research showed men wanted volume, women wanted low-fat, and everyone wanted affordability. Stouffer's responded with an under-$2 product called Pastaria, which appears to have struck a chord with consumers: In just two years, it's racked up $25 million in sales.

These kinds of sales figures mean steady markets for farmers. So does the $14-billion restaurant market, which is just starting to recover from the imposition of the GST in 1991 (which applied to restaurant meals, but not ready-to-eat meals from grocery stores).

However, wherever you are in the food production chain, you have a new ally - Cuisine Canada, an organization dedicated to the advancement of homegrown food. It's only been around a few years, but it's having an impact. CP Hotels, one of the earliest supporters of Cuisine Canada, has announced it's making Canadian cuisine a focal point on the chain's menus nationwide. As well, Cuisine Canada is partnering with the University of Guelph to promote the plethora of food and food products - including more than 100 varieties of barley, soybeans and oats - developed during 100-plus years of Guelph research.

"In certain foods, studies have shown there's an average 40 to 1 return on the investment in research," says Rob McLaughlin, dean of the Ontario Agricultural College. "Those kind of rates are good for the farming community and help keep farmers in business, to meet processor and consumer demands."
Owen Roberts heads research communications for the University of Guelph and is past-president of the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation

© copyright 1998 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.


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