“My parents have always had a garden my whole life,” she said. “I never put two and two together until I had a family of my own. And then when we went through the pandemic, I think it was 2020, I was scared and I wasn’t sure how I was going to feed my family breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. “And, you know, the grocery stores had long lines, and I just wasn’t sure about it. So I thought, how can I help my family? And that was learning how to grow my own food.” Moore grows beets, beans, carrots, cucumbers, peas, radishes, lettuce, onions, peppers and tomatoes both at home in Hamilton, Ont., and in a nearby community. “It’s been two years of solid learning, gardening, research, and now my next level is canning and preserving for the winter.” Moore says the savings are significant. But it’s also less than it could be because both the seeds and seedlings she buys to plant her garden are subject to provincial and federal sales tax, while food grown from the same seeds can be imported into the Canada or be trucked to cities. long distances, it is not. “When you look at our recent statistics, it looks like the rate of gardening in Canada is at an all-time high,” said Sylvain Charlebois, scientific director of the Agri-Food Analytics Laboratory at Dalhousie University. “People want to grow more food for a number of reasons. One is to be proud of the food they grow. They want to do more for themselves. They want better quality. They want to reduce the carbon footprint of our food systems. But many , many citizens really want to grow food to save money.” The tax system, Charlebois says, works against them, because while a lettuce imported from California and sold in the supermarket is not subject to sales tax, a baby lettuce grown in Canada for planting in a home garden is taxed. Canada’s carbon tax may not be popular across the board, but it penalizes those with a larger carbon footprint while rewarding behaviors that shrink it. But Canada’s food sales tax regime does the opposite, offering tax benefits to those with a larger footprint while taxing those with smaller footprints, creating what economists call a “perverse incentive” that works in opposition to the carbon tax.
Depending on the trucks
Canada is heavily dependent on fruit and vegetables imported from outside the country at significant environmental cost. “The carbon footprint is pretty significant,” Charlebois said. “This is how we feed ourselves. We truck the stuff.” Canada’s climate makes it difficult to replace all the foods that come from places like California and Mexico, but Charlebois says skilled growers can time their plantings and harvests so that different foods ripen at different times in the spring. of summer and autumn. “There’s no carbon footprint when I go to my garden and put the seeds in,” Moore said. “Imagine a truck or trucks or fleets driving from California to Ontario.” Most Canadians rely on supermarkets and grocery stores year-round. Even in the summer months, when much of the production comes from Canada, it still comes from commercial growers who use fertilizers that emit large amounts of nitrogen oxide. Agriculture accounts for about one-tenth of Canada’s total emissions, and much of the food is transported by truck over long distances. Studies have shown that food consumed in North America travels an average of over 1,500 km before reaching a plate.
Food bloating, shorter shelf life
Recent supply chain issues have driven fruit and vegetable prices up about 10% in a year, three times faster than the increase in hourly wages. Supply chain delays also caused the lesser-known phenomenon of “shelf-cracking”. “A lot of produce that ends up in the grocery store is not as fresh as it used to be,” Charlebois said. “You’ll buy onions, carrots and tomatoes that are a little softer than usual. And instead of having seven days to eat certain items, you only have two days. And if you don’t eat them, you have to throw them away.” “It’s happening more often since the start of COVID because of labor issues, COVID restrictions and other things like that. To move anything on water or land takes more time and that leads to more waste.” As a grower who breeds plants specifically for seed, Catherine Wallenburg has seen an increase in interest in planting gardens. Catherine Wallenburg, a grower who raises plants specifically for seed, displays a sample of her products that are subject to sales tax in Canada. “When I started the retail business and looked at how the product worked, I was surprised, actually, to find out that it was a taxable product,” he said. (CBC) In her greenhouse in Farrellton, Quebec, she lets lettuce, kale and other plants go to seed, then peels and cleans them to sell under the Northern Seeds label. “When I started the retail business and looked at how the product worked, I was surprised, actually, to find out that it was a taxable product. To me, it just seems like growing food is considered a hobby because the same product, once grown, wouldn’t be taxed.” At least one province, British Columbia, does not charge a tax on either seed or plant stock. The federal government has removed sales tax in recent years on both feminine hygiene products and face masks, but says it has no plans to change the tax regime for food.
High threshold
“Farmers do not pay GST on a select list of essential items used in their farming operations, including bulk purchases of seeds used in food production,” Adrienne Vaupshas of the Department of Finance told CBC News. The federal seed tax only exempts farmers who buy in commercial quantities (at least 2,500 small seeds like lettuce or 5 pounds of larger seeds like beans or corn). “That’s a pretty high bar,” says Wallenburg. “Even some people who are producers, who are market gardeners, for example, will not meet that threshold. So they may end up paying tax on seed.” Market gardeners can claim those taxes back at the end of the year, but Wallenburg’s customers cannot. “It’s a shame there isn’t an incentive to grow and eat more local, and it doesn’t really get more local than straight from your garden.”
Many reasons to grow
Moore says she grows food for reasons that go beyond cost. “I feel like getting your kids involved in the process is a great way to teach them from seed to produce how your food really grows. Many of our children today will go to the grocery store, pick up an apple or a peach, and have no idea that it came from a tree.” Wallenburg says her customers have similar motivations: “Because it’s delicious, because it saves you money, because it’s fun to do outside with the kids.” A tax system that discriminates against home growers isn’t likely to change that equation for most, but Charlebois says the system could go beyond eliminating unfairness and actually encourage people to do something that’s good for the environment, their health and more. for the country’s food security and trade balance. “From a fiscal policy perspective, I’m not sure we’ve done a good job of making sure there’s some consistency across the board here.” “The fascination of recent years has been to use tax to deter behaviour, but we’ve never thought of taxation as a tool to empower citizens to do certain things that are desirable, like growing food, like producing more food at home. “
