Food Freedom Day was February 9th for a second year in a row

CFA has calculated that by February 9th, 2024, a Canadian household of average income will have earned enough to pay for their entire year’s grocery bill, which lands on the same date as 2023.

With food prices continuing to inflate at a rapid pace, it’s important to provide further context on the Food Freedom Day metric, as the average Canadian disposable income is not representative of every Canadian’s experience or the effects that rising food prices have on them.

Due to this, CFA has begun to analyze Food Freedom Day by different quintiles of income of Canadian households in Canada to show the percentage of disposable income that they spent on food last year.

Analyzing through this lens, it shows there is a large difference in the impact on food prices for low-income Canadians. While the lowest income households are spending 28% (a jump from 23.1% last year) of their disposable income on food, the highest income quintile is spending 5% of their disposable income (down from 5.2% last year).

CFA released a press release on the day of Food Freedom Day outlining these statistics as well as farmers’ minimal influence on retail prices.