Food security and Global conflict

May 12, 2026

Key points from this story:

• Canadian farmers can produce food
• Food grain production is vital
• Drove colonization of the Prairies
• Canada called breadbasket for the world
• Canada exports surplus grain
• 757 million people experiencing hunger

Food grain production has always been a major aspect of this country. It was the driving force in colonization of the Prairies, and while there were massively huge mistakes made in terms of how that transpired with First Nations people, it was crucial in the future development of Canada.

This country became widely known as the 'breadbasket for the world' based on its ability to produce and market high grade wheat for flour. Today, Canada still produces far more than it consumes, marketing the extra to the world.

Obviously, Canada is not the only food-producing export country though, and when you look at the potential worldwide farmers still produce enough that the population, even as it grows worldwide, is fed. But sadly that is not the case.

What farmers produce just get to all the hungry people, and given the technologies available to us today we should be doing better in terms of feeding the world. It is a situation which made one paragraph in a recent Brandon Sun article a stark reminder of the situation. The story was about Dale Friesen, with Canadian Foodgrains Bank visiting Kenya, which was interesting. But, the paragraph which hit home so hard was actually the last in the article, a sort of tag on if you will.

It stated, "according to the charity, 757 million people around the globe are experiencing hunger, and one in 11 continue to be impacted by hunger. Friesen said across the world, war is the biggest driver of that problem."

That's a double whammy of disturbing in my books. On the one hand the scale of hunger is terrifying. It's some 200 million more than the population of Canada, the United States and Mexico combined.

One simply looks at the number, shakes their head and asks how is that possible? Then Friesen offers up the answer in a single word 'wars'. And it's again a shake of the head and a question, how are wars still a thing? Did we learn nothing with Nazi death camps in WWII? Do we not see the sheer horror of a bombed school in Iran? Do we not understand Russia has no reason to be shooting people in Ukraine?

Amid the carnage of war, people go hungry.

And image how many could be fed, housed, cared for if the money spend on military assault rifles, bombs, ships, fighter planes went to humanitarian aid instead. We could actually go to sleep one night knowing no one went hungry that day.

It is an image that should be happening every day, and yet somehow it eludes the grasp of humanity.