Rethinking Food Security: A Distribution Challenge, not a Supply Problem

At a glance:

• Food insecurity is a distribution problem—not a supply issue. Canada produces enough food, but system gaps prevent surplus from reaching those who need it most.
• The profile of need is shifting and growing. Record demand now includes working Canadians and a rapidly increasing number of seniors, reflecting broader cost-of-living pressures.
• Lasting solutions require system-level coordination. Scalable impact depends on partnerships, infrastructure investment, and applying new ways of thinking to strengthen food recovery and distribution networks.
• GVFB is advancing an innovation-led model that treats food security as a supply chain to optimize, not a shortage to solve.

When John Nicola sat down with Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB) CEO David Long, the conversation quickly moved beyond the assumptions that often define food insecurity.

What emerged was a different framing—one that challenges the notion of scarcity and shifts the focus from how much food we produce to how it reaches the people who need it.

For Nicola Wealth, this perspective resonates deeply. Food security is one of the firm’s five core giving focus areas, with a clear connection between long-term community wellbeing and broader economic stability.

A Growing Need – And a Persistent Misconception

Sustained inflation and rising costs are being felt in households across the country. Demand for food banks has reached record levels, with nearly 2.2 million visits in a single month in 2025. As David Long notes, “one in four Canadians now experience food insecurity.”

What is less widely understood is who is being affected. A rising proportion of those currently accessing food support are employed: individuals and families navigating rising housing costs, wage pressures, and inflation that stretch budgets beyond capacity. As Long points out, food prices alone have climbed by roughly 30 per cent, leaving even steady incomes unable to keep pace.

The strain is not limited to working families. Long describes seniors as the fastest-growing demographic: a program initially budgeted for about 1,500 people aged 65 and older each month now supports roughly 3,500.

As David Long emphasizes, the issue is not a lack of food. It is a distribution challenge, ensuring that available, often surplus, food reaches people when and where it is needed.

This reframing matters. It shifts the conversation away from short-term relief and toward system design.

A System-Level Shift: From Scarcity to Redistribution

GVFB has rebuilt its model around this shift. Today, a significant share of the food it distributes is fresh and perishable, which demands a fundamentally different operating model.

Delivering fresh, nutritious food at scale demands:

• Food rescue at the source: recovering surplus from farmers, retailers, and producers before it is wasted—often redirecting high-quality, fresh food that would otherwise go to landfill due to overproduction, cosmetic standards, or supply chain gaps.
• Investment in storage and preservation: from cold-chain infrastructure and large-scale refrigeration to food processing capabilities that extend shelf life and maintain nutritional value, enabling a high proportion of fresh, perishable food to reach client.
• Sophisticated logistics: coordinating supply and demand across a distributed network of 160+ agency partners, alongside direct-to-client distribution, ensuring food reaches communities quickly and at scale.
• Quality and dignity as a design principle: prioritizing fresh, nutritious food and curated weekly selections, moving away from low-quality donations toward a more intentional, health-focused model.

This is where David Long describes a meaningful shift: treating food security as an operational and systems challenge, not simply a charitable one.

Why Partnerships Are the Enabler

No single organization can solve a distribution problem at scale. GVFB operates as part of a broader ecosystem, working with producers, retailers, logistics providers, and more than 160 community partners to move food efficiently across the province.

On the supply side, farmers and greenhouse growers routinely produce more than their grocery contracts require, often around 10% above demand to meet retail specifications. GVFB helps redirect this surplus through British Columbia’s farm tax credit, which returns 25% of the donated food’s market value to the grower.

Retail partners add another layer. The distribution centres that supply grocery stores, carry standing surpluses to keep shelves stocked, and GVFB collects this food as new shipments arrive, capturing it while it is still fresh.  Together, these relationships reinforce a central insight:  effective solutions requirement alignment across sectors:  public, private and non-profit.

The Human Impact: From Surviving to Thriving

The case for redesigning food distribution is measured not just in pounds of food moved, but in its impact on people’s lives. The shift toward fresher, more nutritious food is already showing meaningful effects, particularly for children. David Long points to an after-school program where replacing high-sugar snacks with dairy, fruit, and vegetables led to calmer focus, fewer disruptions, and improved academic engagement.

For adults and families, consistent access to healthy food can ease some of the day-to-day pressures of food insecurity. It supports overall wellbeing and creates greater stability—allowing people to direct more of their energy toward work, family, and longer-term goals.

These outcomes also point to a broader, system-level benefit. Over time, better nutrition can help reduce strain on the health-care system by lowering the risk of chronic conditions such as early-onset diabetes. GVFB is now partnering with the University of British Columbia to study this link, reframing community nutrition as a form of preventive care.

The Role of Business - And Private Capital

Financial support remains essential, particularly for infrastructure, transportation, and capacity building. But equally important is the application of business capabilities; operations, logistics, and data, to strengthen the system itself.

Practical areas where organizations can contribute include:

• Supporting infrastructure that enables food recovery and distribution
• Providing consistent, flexible funding over time
• Applying operational expertise to improve efficiency and scale
• Creating workplace environments that support employee stability and community engagement

These forms of support move beyond episodic giving toward sustained partnership, a distinction that ultimately determines impact.

A Long-Term Lens on Food Scarcity

Lasting progress in food security depends on systems built to endure. It will not be defined by short-term relief alone, but by:  

• More efficient redistribution of surplus food
• Greater access to fresh, nutritious options
• A reduced need for emergency food support, as root causes are addressed
• Stronger alignment across institutions and partners

This is not a single solution, but an evolving system, one that improves through coordination, innovation, and consistent investment.

A Shared Responsibility

Food security sits at the intersection of health, dignity, and community resilience.

The insight is straightforward—but easy to overlook: the challenge is not how much food exists, but how effectively we move it.

When systems function well, when access is reliable, and dignity is preserved, people are better positioned to participate fully in their lives and communities.  And when that happens at scale, the impact extends far beyond the individual, strengthening the very fabric of the economy itself.

In that sense, rethinking food security is not only a social imperative. It is an exercise in building better systems, ones designed not just to respond to need, but to reduce it over time.

Looking for ways to support one of Canada’s most pressing social challenges: you can Donate or Volunteer.      

This material contains the current opinions of the author, and such opinions are subject to change without notice. Any mention of third-party products, services, or organizations on the podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation.