I'll break the ice. I'm Morgan Smallman.
Just before I begin, I have one question that I want to ask. This is from my point of view. I want to know why May has been the time chosen to hear stories and arguments on the future of agriculture. I ask this because springtime is the preparation and planting period. It is a critical time for seeding, which will reflect on how our crops perform throughout the rest of the season. I bring this up because I believe Canada is becoming more and more removed from agriculture.
I come from a family farm in rural western P.E.I., which is currently operated by my father, my uncle, and my grandmother. The farm has been in my family for over 125 years, and we've always had a combination of crops and livestock. Over the years the family farm has become more concentrated on growing hogs and wheat to feed the hogs, as well as potatoes for the table market and processing.
Our farm operated like this for over 20 years, each year tolerating new rules and regulations that Canadian policies have enforced upon us. I've always had an interest in agriculture, in particular farming. I've watched my father care for livestock and tend the crops. He taught me a lot of lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, lessons I had hoped to be using to continue the family farm.
Knowing that agriculture is an industry that is moving forward in technology and becoming more like a business, I decided to continue my education after I graduated from high school, and I attended the Nova Scotia Agricultural College. I took a bachelor of science in agricultural economics, and my thoughts were that these new skills that I would obtain would help me to bring a younger and more modern view to our family farm. Unfortunately, the farm got smaller, and with the closing of the hog plant on P.E.I., our family felt it wasn't feasible to pay freight to haul our hogs to Nova Scotia, since the price for hogs is so low, so the mixed operation that the family had operated for years is now a cash crop operation relying on potatoes and grains.
That's the history. Now here's the problem. I'm 23 years old. I've been to university. I carry a debt load from tuition, and I want to farm. How many young people do you hear saying that? This all sounds great, I know, but how many are going to finance a 23-year-old to purchase a farming operation consisting of land, machinery, buildings, and of course its own debt? Let me just remind you that we are talking about a 23-year-old with no collateral, who is already carrying a significant amount of debt.
My family has worked hard to build this business as well as it could, and it deserves a fair price for the hardships it's gone through to do so. The trouble, as I alluded to before, is I can't afford to assume the risk, or even pay for this today, especially with the uncertainty in the markets for our industry.
We, as young farmers, need help. We want to produce food for the rest of the country, for our friends, our families, and our neighbours to consume, food that we know is safe, food that we know. Why can't there be a program encouraging young farmers like me and others in this room to help us to get into an industry that can support a country? What if instead of spending money on transporting food from other countries we invested that money in our own agriculture to help make it feasible? Why can't there be stronger risk management programs for young farmers--low or no-interest loans would even be a help--to make it so that we can do what we love to do?
Farmers are investors. They can't hold onto money. Farmers help keep the economy going. They're always looking for ways to better their operations, whether that be in new equipment, a facelift on some of the older buildings, a new truck, and the list goes on. In P.E.I. in particular, agriculture supports a lot of people. I've heard it said countless times--and I believe it is true--that when farmers are hurting, everyone is hurting.
Thank you for listening to my story.