With the significant upswing in demand for plant-based foods, spurred on by the pandemic, Canadian farmers and food innovators are well positioned to be big winners in the food revolution.
Canada is one of the largest pea protein producers and the largest canola producer globally and several prairie companies have signed production deals with big food companies such as Nestle and Beyond Meat that are leading the charge in plant-based foods. The opportunity is a marriage of demand for new products from new markets, deep experience in crop farming, and hi-tech production methods. And farming techniques with a lower environmental footprint are also part of this winning formula.
The French agri-food giant Roquette, is building a $400 million pea protein production facility in Manitoba to fulfill a three-year supply contract with Beyond Meat. Nestle has a contract with Merit Functional Foods, which is also building a new plant in Manitoba, to supply pea and canola proteins for their plant-based food products in Europe. They join other plant-based protein companies in Alberta and Saskatchewan, including Verident Foods founded by Canadian movie director James Cameron.
These companies are using proprietary fractionator technology to better separate protein from starch and fibre for use in products like plant-based burgers, and almond and pea milks. Many of these companies are supported by a robust Canadian government funding program (Merit has just received $100 million in federal support for their new plant), as part of the “plant protein supercluster” business-government partnership designed to support a transition in agriculture to more sustainable food production.
National Research Council of Canada says Canada has strong potential to become the world’s “plant-based protein basket”. Source: NRCC
Demand for pea protein has grown by 13% since 2017, driven by consumer trends to plant-based protein alternatives to meat, according to Farm Credit Canada. Human consumption of pea protein is expected to double by 2024. Prairie provinces in Canada are planting 4.3 million acres of peas this year.
The overall global plant-based protein market was more than US$8 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach US$15 billion by 2023. The traditional market for these products is animal feed sold as a raw commodity, much of it exported. These new companies are moving up the value chain to manufacture food ingredients in Canada, attracting international investment and creating higher value technology and manufacturing jobs.
Researchers see new opportunities in lentils, fava beans and canola. For example, pasta made with 25% lentils lowers the food’s carbon footprint by 25%, increases protein by 25% and fibre by 100%. And given that companies like Beyond Meat make environmental claims about water usage, GHG emissions and energy consumption, Canadian farmers are well positioned to provide specific data about point of origin and production methods to verify these claims. This is another competitive advantage for Canadian producers in the growing global market for plant-based proteins.