Canada has an extensive range of research centres, food incubators, accelerators and labs supporting food and beverage innovation through the research they do and/or the services they offer. Each week throughout 2023, we’ll be highlighting an organization that’s supporting food innovation in Canada.
Mission: The FAI is an interdisciplinary research centre that focuses on issues, challenges, and sustainability solutions related to food and farm systems.
Focus: The institute explores emerging agricultural technologies, techniques and methods, as well as critical food system challenges and issues.
Services: The FAI conducts research under two major themes: agricultural technology and innovation, and food systems planning and policy. The agricultural technology theme explores emerging agricultural technologies, techniques and methods, such as cellular agriculture and indoor farming, and their potential for contributing to sustainable food systems. The Institute recognizes that technology alone does not comprise a sustainability solution, and thus, it also researches potential approaches, strategies, and policies that can complement the widespread implementation of agricultural technologies and innovations for better sustainability outcomes.
The food systems planning and policy theme explores critical food system challenges and issues in order to find ways and develop tools to address these challenges/issues in a manner that aligns with broader goals for sustainability and resilience. FAI researches agricultural land-use planning and policy on local and regional scales to identify best approaches for developing farmland and improving food assets. In addition, FAI incorporates thinking and work from the agricultural technology and innovation theme into its planning and policy research, and it examines how land can be used more efficiently with the implementation of high-yield, low-footprint agricultural technologies.
What you Need to Know: FAI partners with a diversity of researchers, industry leaders, and governments to build knowledge and tools for moving toward sustainable, resilient food systems for communities and regions in BC, Canada, and across the globe.
Notable News: This fall the federal government, through Genome Canada, announced an almost $27-million investment in nine Interdisciplinary Challenge Teams (ICTs) comprised of researchers from different disciplines whose genomics research and innovation into sustainable solutions will help create a more resilient national food system and supply chains. That includes an ICT based at the University of the Fraser Valley for a project titled “The social implications of genomic agri-food technologies: Ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion in the transition to climate-resilient Canadian agricultural and food systems,” led by Evan Bowness, Lenore Newman and Stefania Pizzirani. For more on work from Dr. Lenore Newman, see CFIN’s coverage of her book (with Dr. Evan Fraser) Dinner on Mars: The Technologies that Will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth, and CFIN’s Cultivating Success: Canada's Big Biomanufacturing Opportunity.