Certainly the easiest way to explain that, Madam Chair, is the more people we have bidding on our product, the better the price will be. There is a demand out there and we are seeing that on the global stage. We are also seeing it domestically.
One thing that producers need access to is to lift themselves a little further up that food chain rung and start to value add. We have certain sectors of our society that are not allowed to do that in a way that is cost effective. We have others that are. We look at those with envy from western Canada of course. I am sure we will have a little more debate on that particular enterprise later tonight.
Having said that, I am always buoyed by farmers wanting to take on the challenge to broaden their scope, to actually do more with their product, to diversify.
I know the members opposite make a big thing out of farm debt, but a good portion of that farm debt is because farmers are diversifying. They are changing to the new ways of doing things.
The young guys who are farming my land, and they cover now some 32,000 acres, use 65 foot air seeders. That scope of equipment was unheard of even a decade ago and GPS controlled steering up and down fields.
I had a great opportunity last fall, as I helped open a new ethanol facility in western Canada, to go for a ride on one of the new John Deere combines. This thing had a 36 foot header on it. We were running up and down a field with 55 to 60 bushel utility wheat at nine miles an hour and just floating along. The header is moving independently and the GPS is steering the combine. The innovation and the intensity of agriculture in this country now is phenomenal.
We still have smaller farmers who are doing very well. They tend to be more diversified and they offer us a good cross-section of top quality product. I commend them for the job they are doing too.