Paul Martin commentary
This week’s inflation numbers for March were feeling the effects of higher energy prices as global markets continue to deal with the indigestion generated by global geopolitics.
Overall inflation was higher and Saskatchewan stood out on one of those metrics: food inflation here was higher than other parts of the country.
And there may be a story or an opportunity buried in that statistic.
Saskatchewan is world scale in its agriculture. In other words, we focus on large volume production – often with smaller margins – but we flourish because we produce so much, largely destined for foreign markets.
What we don’t do in large volume is generate product for the local table market, especially in the winter. So, we have to import, making us susceptible to higher transportation costs triggered by the Middle East war.
There are a few intrepid entrepreneurs who are working on development of a greenhouse industry but it is in the early stages. And exploration of geothermal heat from the fledgling lithium industry may add one more asset that could be the bridge from novel to larger scale local food production.
