Agriculture committee  One of the things that went on during the last 10 years, probably, is that Dalhousie University did a study on infrastructure for our actual trellis equipment, so we now have a template that we can plug everything into to build stronger, more sustainable systems for holding the trees up.

Agriculture committee  We have some of the best cold storage. We do a lot of research at our Kentville AAFC building, so we have some of the best cold storage data around. We're able to hold our fruit back in cold storage longer, while Washington and other areas flood the market. We can hold our fruit until the spring or summer of the following year.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's correct. The CRA treats it as residential even though we can't rent it out to the guys. It's treated differently from the way it would be treated if it was a cold storage building, a barn or any other infrastructure for the farm. It's just treated differently, and when I was building it, a lot of growers in our area were building them too, and we all assumed that there would be an HST rebate on it like any other commercial expense.

Agriculture committee  On pest protection, the PMC needs to go out and find the data to give to the PMRA. If we lose some of these chemistries, we are going to be in a huge mess. We won't have to worry about putting apples in bags, because there will be no apples to put in the bags. It's very important that PMC and PMRA be funded accordingly.

Agriculture committee  Good morning, everyone. Distinguished committee members and fellow presenters, my name is Jeffrey Walsh. I am a third generation apple farmer from Rockland, Nova Scotia. I'm here representing the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers' Association as the recently elected vice-president. Our association represents tree fruit growers of Nova Scotia, which means primarily apples, but we also grow pears, peaches and other stone fruit.