Canada needs to boost its fruit and vegetable production.   Ottawa—Canada is on the cusp of an enormous transition in fruit and vegetable production in the coming decade to meet the demand for more domestically-produced produce, says Evan Fraser, Director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. What will drive the change is the need to reduce our dependence on foreign-grown produce because of the uncertainties surrounding their production created by climate change and the need to meet the Canada Food Guide call for increased fruit and vegetable consumption among Canadians, he said. His comments came during a Globe and Mail online presentation on the future of farming in a changing environment. As well as becoming better able to feed its population, Canada should also strive to become a global leader in the development of produce growing technology for greenhouses and vertical food growing facilities in urban areas. Better technology could enable more greenhouses to operate year-round as encouraging the construction of the vertical operations, he said. However the grown outdoor produce will still be essential to meeting domestic demand. Canada gets much of its fruit and vegetables from California but climate change has left the state virtually out of water, he said. “We're vulnerable because of our dependence on foreign sourced fruits and vegetables.” Last spring showed another vulnerability in the Canadian fruit and vegetable sector, he said. Because of the pandemic, many of the vital temporary foreign workers the sector depends on either couldn't reach Canada or were later arriving creating numerous production and harvesting problems. While climate change seems to have given many parts of Canada longer growing seasons, growers will need to find varieties that can thrive under these conditions if production is to expand out of the southern-most parts of the country, he said. There are serious issues that need to be considered before agriculture pushes into areas it was previously kept out of because of short growing seasons, Fraser said. One is the impact opening up new areas for farming will have on the country's already-challenged biodiversity and also the water supplies of Indigenous and northern communities. It could also lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions at a time when the country is trying to reduce them. Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.