Canadians react to food inflation and grow their own gardens, seek food bargains

Retail food has increased by 11 per cent in one year, according to Statistics Canada.

What are some Canadians doing about it? 15.5 per cent of Canadians have started growing their own food, just in the last year. 

Canadians have been trying to cope with higher food and menu prices in many ways. 

Ontario saw the highest percentage of people who started to grow their own food, at 17.4 %. While a total of 6.2 % of Canadians use hydroponics at home to grow food, 4.5 % claim they have livestock at home now, and didn’t 12 months ago. The figures from a study conducted by the Dalhousie University Agri-Food Analytics Lab, investigated how Canadian consumers are dealing with higher food prices in the last year.

Others are just trying to navigate through by using new options. The most popular grocery shopping habit change we measured was that many Canadians have used loyalty program points. A total of 33.7% have been using loyalty program points to pay for groceries in the last 12 months. The second option is weekly flyers (32.1 %), followed by coupons (23.9 %).

While 19.1 % of Canadians have visited discount stores in the last 12 months, 11.5% of Canadians have visited dollar stores more often to purchase food. A total of 8 % are visiting farmers markets more often, and 7.1 % of consumers visited roadside stands to buy directly from farmers in the last year.