Long battle lies ahead

FORUM HEARS PANDEMIC’S IMPACT TO INFLUENCE ECONOMY, SOCIAL ORDER FOR LONG TIME

The COVID-19 pandemic is fundamentally changing the way the world’s economic and social orders function and some of those effects will be permanent, speakers at the Global Business Forum in Banff said on Thursday.

In a series of online sessions broadcast to a ballroom at the Banff Springs Hotel with just three people per table to prevent spread of the disease, subject experts from around the world said the virus has accelerated and amplified trends they were already seeing, as well as taking a few surprising turns.

The pandemic has drawn attention to food security and that stands to boost a technological revolution in agriculture in Canada, said Murad Al-Katib, CEO of Saskatchewan food processing giant AGT Food and Ingredients Inc.

The expansion of plant protein crops such as peas, lentils, and other legumes in Prairie fields has boosted productivity of the industry, and processing those crops into value-added products will continue to grow, he said, while calling on government to help that process.

“Governments are paying attention now. COVID has everyone spooked,” he said.

“COVID wasn’t a slap in the face, it was a punch in the nose for governments to recognize that they can’t just leave food and food systems entirely to fragmented private-sector imports and distribution.”

South of the border, meanwhile, recent civil unrest and violence has been escalated by a pandemic that has disproportionately hurt poorer families and Black people, while adding greatly to the fortunes of the richest Americans, said Trevor Noren, executive director of New York analytics firm 13D.

He said COVID-19 is “gasoline for a fire that had already been lit” that could accelerate generational change in ways that historically have been caused by wars.

“We believe COVID could prove to be that catalyst today, the event that forces a reckoning with the inefficiencies and vulnerabilities of excessively concentrated wealth and power,” he said.

“It will mean a backlash against the three primary forces that have driven consolidation: globalization, digitization and financialization.”

World oil demand has recovered to about 90 million barrels per day and that’s less than the 100 million bpd that existed before the COVID-19 slump, but it doesn’t mean the world has reached “peak oil,” said Michael Tran, managing director and energy strategist for RBC in New York.