There’s always a lot of talk in the local and/or organic food movements about how local farmers just can’t keep up with the demand - that there’s just not enough local and organic produce to go around. I don’t know if the same system is in place here in Canada, but in the US at least, it appears that this dearth of local produce is the will of the government:

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.

Read the piece on the NY Times website for the full story.