The Food Professor

Is artificial intelligence about to transform agriculture more than any other industry? On Season Seven, Episode Four of The Food Professor podcast, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and Michael LeBlanc sit down with Aidan Connolly, President of AgriTech Capital and past president of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA), one of the world's leading voices on agtech and the future of farming.
Aidan helped Alltech grow from roughly $25 million to $2.5 billion in revenue and now connects startups, investors and agri-food companies to help innovation scale. He separates agtech hype from real value, explaining why vertical farms, cell-cultured meat and insect farming struggled, and why AI's potential in agriculture may exceed any other sector if the industry can solve its farm data problem. He shares his DRIVE framework for AI adoption and weighs in on data ownership, cooling agtech venture capital, mega-farms and food traceability. Then he ranks countries on an S-to-D agtech tier list. Find out why Canada earns a B, Israel an A, and what Canada can learn from the Netherlands and New Zealand. You'll also hear Aidan's magic-wand fix for turning Canada into an agri-food superpower.
In the news, Michael and Sylvain unpack a good week for Canadian agri-food policy. Canada's investment summit focused on energy and infrastructure. Even so, Farm Credit Canada's $1 billion project financing initiative, $150 million in agri-food capital and a new productivity tax break for small and medium-sized businesses could help farmers and food processors invest in automation and R&D. Sylvain argues a more productive, competitive food sector is Canada's best answer to U.S. tariffs.
The hosts also weigh EU associate membership, the CETA payoff for Canadian cereal exports to Europe, and why Canada should say "yes to all" trading partners. Agriculture makes up just 1.9% of Canada's growing trade with China, while Chinese tariffs on Canadian peas add uncertainty.
On grocery prices, food inflation has eased to 2.8%, but prices are up 28.9% since September 2021. Sylvain explains why food price volatility is the real enemy, with Canada logging 17 month-to-month drops in five years, the most in the G7. They also cover beef imports up 13%, with Australia and Brazil gaining, easing cattle prices, and why high diesel costs could add 0.4 percentage points to food inflation this winter.
Plus: the return of Yves Veggie Cuisine under Maple Leaf Foods, crisis communication lessons from the Taylor Farms outbreak and the Silk recall, why the CFIA should declare when a recall is over, and a fun Dairy Farmers of Canada pop-up café on Toronto's Queen Street.
Like, subscribe and share The Food Professor for weekly insights on food prices, agtech, trade and Canadian agriculture, and watch the full video episode now on YouTube.

About Us
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Visiting Professor in Food Policy and Distribution at McGill University and a Professor in Food Distribution and Policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.
Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal.
He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada.
Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.
With extensive experience collaborating with businesses, governments, and NGOs, Dr. Charlebois combines academic rigor with practical expertise, making him one of the most influential voices in the global agri-food landscape. His work continues to advance the understanding of food systems, fostering innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry. In 2025, he received the prestigious Charles III medal recognizing his tremendous work in informing Canadians about food issues.
Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the National Retail Federation (NRF) as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2025, and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Everything you thought you knew about ghee is wrong. In this episode of The Food Professor podcast, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Vreshin "Vresh" Nagarajan, Founder and Chief Ghee Officer of Vresh Foods, makers of OG GHEE, recorded live on the show floor at the SIAL Food Innovation Show in Montreal.
Vresh makes a compelling and slightly incendiary case: roughly 90% of the $100 million of ghee sold in Canada every year isn't actually ghee. It's anhydrous milk fat, or butter oil, an industrially processed dairy ingredient usually made offshore, shipped in shelf-stable, repackaged here and sold as "pure desi ghee." Real ghee is cultured butter cooked until the water evaporates and the lactose and casein caramelize, a distinction the Codex recognizes and one you can smell the moment the jar opens.
In four years Vresh has gone from a South Asian meal-kit side hustle in Calgary to a national Loblaw listing and a Costco Ontario rotation, built on an unlikely premise: that ghee is Canada's last viable domestic cooking fat. With a 485F smoke point, a five-year shelf life, no refrigeration required, and 30 litres of Canadian milk in every kilogram, he argues ghee is the best milk-utilization story in the country. He also has pointed words about who has been underselling South Asian consumers, and why "desi" should mean Canadian. The full video interview is on The Food Professor YouTube channel.
But first, we start with the food and agriculture news of the week.
Michael and Sylvain open on the Prime Minister's address to the nation, and the name he never said, before turning to the latest U.S. tariff recalibration, the new ban on Canadian spirits and wine, and what the September 15 and 29 deadlines mean for agri-food. Sylvain argues the real damage isn't the tariff math, it's the total absence of predictability, with dairy leaders now openly weighing whether to shift production south. Sylvain points to Mark Warner's CBC interview, Ian Lee's parallel argument, and calls for Parliament to be recalled, citing the 1988 free trade debate as precedent.
Then: reindeer. Ottawa is putting $800,000 behind a northern herd grown from a few hundred animals to 7,000, and Sylvain explains why no Canadian parent is selling Rudolph at the meat counter. Plus Sapporo's non-alcoholic production possibly heading stateside, Africa's redrawn map and its enormous agri-food potential, McDonald's dropping pumpkin spice after 34 years of PSL dominance, fresh Satov Consulting research on whether Dunkin' can win over Canadian coffee drinkers, why Sylvain would rather support than boycott, Walmart's delivery ambitions, and a farewell to New Coke architect Brian Dyson.

About Us
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Visiting Professor in Food Policy and Distribution at McGill University and a Professor in Food Distribution and Policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.
Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal.
He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada.
Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.
With extensive experience collaborating with businesses, governments, and NGOs, Dr. Charlebois combines academic rigor with practical expertise, making him one of the most influential voices in the global agri-food landscape. His work continues to advance the understanding of food systems, fostering innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry. In 2025, he received the prestigious Charles III medal recognizing his tremendous work in informing Canadians about food issues.
Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the National Retail Federation (NRF) as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2025, and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Season Seven, Episode 2 of The Food Professor podcast lands its first guest interview, and it's a Canadian food business story three decades in the making. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois are joined by Dave Jones, President and CEO of Bento Sushi, the company that turned a small 1996 takeout counter in downtown Toronto into the largest sushi business in Canada.

Dave joined Bento in 2009 in an entry-level management role, moved through operations, procurement and supply chain, and took over as CEO in 2022. He unpacks a business most Canadians walk past every day without realizing its scale: more than 700 locations inside grocery stores, universities, hospitals and other retail environments, ten commissaries, roughly 2,500 distribution points, about 800 employees and close to 30 million packs a year. He explains the difference between made-in-store kiosks and the delivered commissary model, why automation now shapes production of items like onigiri, how global sourcing and procurement hold up under pressure, and what price sensitivity looks like in a category built on fresh, daily-made food. Bento's 30th anniversary in 2026 gives the conversation a natural lens on how retail foodservice, grocery prepared food and Canadian consumer expectations have all changed.

Before the interview, Michael and Sylvain work through a busy news week. Ottawa applied counter-tariffs to seafood and fish and reversed course within 48 hours, a reminder of how tangled Canada-US supply chains really are. Honey and molasses stayed on the list, with Manitoba, Canada's largest honey exporter, taking the hit. Sylvain pushes back on Chapman's plan to replace 70 percent of its American ingredients, questioning the timing and the nationalistic framing.

On beef, the hosts dig into the Trump administration's push on prices, the 300,000 tonne Brazilian import move, the JBS White House visit, the Department of Justice probe into beef pricing, and why cattle futures fell and ranchers are unhappy. Sylvain's view: ranchers are price takers in a North American market, retail prices won't move much, and Canadians could end up paying more.

Also on the docket: dairy dominating CUSMA consultation submissions, Daniel Gobé's election in Quebec and his supply management odds, and Q2 trade numbers showing exports up 3 billion dollars net year over year with 2.6 billion of that heading to the United States, despite all the diversification talk.

In the retail block, Michael breaks down the Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons loyalty partnership and why coalition programs need high-frequency categories, plus Loblaw's expanded capital spending on T&T, discount and specialty formats, its real estate DNA and its exit from banking. The episode closes on retail crime, and the arson at a Pattison Foods Nesters store in Vancouver. The full video interview is live on The Food Professor YouTube channel.

About Us
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Visiting Professor in Food Policy and Distribution at McGill University and a Professor in Food Distribution and Policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.
Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal.
He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada.
Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.
With extensive experience collaborating with businesses, governments, and NGOs, Dr. Charlebois combines academic rigor with practical expertise, making him one of the most influential voices in the global agri-food landscape. His work continues to advance the understanding of food systems, fostering innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry. In 2025, he received the prestigious Charles III medal recognizing his tremendous work in informing Canadians about food issues.
Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the National Retail Federation (NRF) as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2025, and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

The Food Professor podcast returns for Season Seven with a no-guest, all-catch-up season premiere. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois are back on the mic after a summer of live interviews from SIAL, and there is a serious backlog of Canadian and international food industry news to work through.

Sylvain opens with the summer he actually had: 25 to 30 media interviews a week, including live hits on CNN and Fox News about explosive poo and the U.S. lettuce recalls. That leads into a real conversation about food safety and Cyclospora, a parasite you cannot simply wash off produce. With Taylor Farms, a $7 billion operator, at the centre of the recall, Michael asks the obvious question: if the most sophisticated player in the category cannot stop it, who can? Sylvain compares oversight on both sides of the border, noting roughly 8,000 federal inspectors in the U.S. versus nearly 4,000 in Canada for a tenth of the population, and explains why our cold chain and an actual winter lower the risk here.

Then the tariff file. Sylvain names Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, Smoot-Hawley's descendant, as the summer's number-one story, with agriculture squarely targeted: dairy, alcohol, and honey. On the Canadian side, they dig into a counter-tariff list heavy on seafood and ag, whether it can really move U.S. midterms, and why potash retaliation could backfire on Canadian producers.

Story number two: the Competition Bureau sending Nortera's acquisition of B&G Foods Canada's Green Giant and Le Sieur brands to the Competition Tribunal, a striking break from twenty years of waved-through Canadian grocery and food consolidation.

Also on the docket: beef volumes down almost 5% and the risk of losing Canadian shoppers to a premium-price perception; Tyson idling a plant for lack of supply; chicken production up 5.6% as dark meat demand climbs; stubborn diesel prices and the Strait of Hormuz; Gay Lea Foods' $200 million Toronto investment against a backdrop of 1,400 new U.S. food plants versus fewer than 50 in Canada; El Nino's likely push on 2027 food inflation; and why GLP-1 drugs may reshape the Halloween candy aisle, plus the CNE's wildest new midway foods.

Sylvain also previews his tenth book, Feed the Power, on food geopolitics, out from University of Toronto Press in January 2027. The episode closes with a tribute to Senator Todd Lewis, a rare and genuine agriculture advocate in Ottawa, and a candid exchange about Prime Minister Carney's trade posture and where Canada goes next.

Next week: Dave Jones of Bento Sushi.

About Us
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Visiting Professor in Food Policy and Distribution at McGill University and a Professor in Food Distribution and Policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.
Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal.
He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada.
Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.
With extensive experience collaborating with businesses, governments, and NGOs, Dr. Charlebois combines academic rigor with practical expertise, making him one of the most influential voices in the global agri-food landscape. His work continues to advance the understanding of food systems, fostering innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry. In 2025, he received the prestigious Charles III medal recognizing his tremendous work in informing Canadians about food issues.
Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the National Retail Federation (NRF) as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2025, and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

Recorded live on the show floor at SIAL Canada 2026 in Montreal, this Food Professor summer bonus episode features Cloé Helmond, Co-Founder of Les Brutes du Soya, fresh off a first-place win in the Start-up Scale CPG category of SIAL Canada's seventh annual Startup Pitch Competition. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois catch her still holding the hardware — and still slightly stunned, since the Scale category is built for companies four to six years old and Les Brutes is barely two.

The origin story is pure Quebec agri-food. Les Brutes grew out of a family soy farm in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the Montérégie, launched with co-founder Marie-Pier Gélineau and her brother. Cloé, a social worker by training, spotted the paradox: Quebec grows an enormous soy crop and ships most of it overseas, while Canadian shoppers buy imported textured vegetable protein (TVP). Les Brutes closes that loop, processing soy at its own facility and in Saskatoon into shelf-stable TVP.

Cloé walks the hosts through the line — plain, Mexican-style and Greek-style TVP, plus two new SKUs debuting at SIAL: soy curls and bacon bites. The bacon bites are plant-based, gluten-free, dairy-free, 50 per cent protein and 21 per cent fibre, seasoned with paprika, maple syrup and tamari, with no artificial ingredients (Michael's on-mic crunch test does not disappoint). The value math is the real story: a 100-gram pouch rehydrates to 200 grams in about ten minutes with water or broth, delivering roughly two cups of ground-meat substitute for about six dollars, with a two-year shelf life.

That economics pitch shapes the retail conversation. Les Brutes sits in IGA, Metro, Rachelle-Béry and Avril, usually in the health food or gluten-free set — and the hosts press on whether the "healthy aisle" default is the right home for a product aimed at flexitarians and budget-conscious families rather than committed vegans. SIAL also opened foodservice doors, including a conversation with Air Canada about a shelf-stable vegetarian option.

Then the reveal. At taping, Cloé's appearance on Dans l'œil du dragon — Quebec's Dragons' Den on Radio-Canada — was still under embargo, and she shared the outcome off the record. It has since aired in Season 15: Les Brutes asked for $50,000 for 10 per cent, drew two offers, and closed a deal with dragon David Côté, co-founder of LOOP Mission, Rise Kombucha and Crudessence, at $50,000 for 10 per cent plus a fifty-cent royalty on every unit sold. She also recounts the dragons challenging whether a family business should give up equity at all.

Looking ahead, Cloé eyes SIAL Paris, European soy perceptions and the export runway beyond Quebec. A fast, fun conversation about local crops, smart pricing and plant protein that earns its shelf space.

About Us
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Visiting Professor in Food Policy and Distribution at McGill University and a Professor in Food Distribution and Policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.
Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal.
He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada.
Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.
With extensive experience collaborating with businesses, governments, and NGOs, Dr. Charlebois combines academic rigor with practical expertise, making him one of the most influential voices in the global agri-food landscape. His work continues to advance the understanding of food systems, fostering innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry. In 2025, he received the prestigious Charles III medal recognizing his tremendous work in informing Canadians about food issues.
Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the National Retail Federation (NRF) as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2025, and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.