Agriculture committee  No, and I was actually trying to figure it out myself when I was looking at these numbers this morning. I was thinking about going back and seeing if I could get a ten-year chart on the price of wheat. That might help. I'm wondering as well if an investment tax credit may have

Agriculture committee  You can see the dip in 2003-04 from the BSE crisis. That's pretty evident. That's one thing I would point out, but indeed the overall size of the market.... I did put a total in there for tractors over 40 horsepower. As you can see, that particular number is around 10,500 to 11,0

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  No, I don't know any precise numbers, except for those numbers I gave for the Nebraska tractor test. If we go back to it, back in 1981 it was 12 horsepower hours per gallon, and now it's up to 18.7. That is a 50% improvement just in fuel usage. In terms of the emissions, I think

Agriculture committee  What I'll endeavour to do is get back to you with the warranty provisions of AEM members. I'm sure that one of our members puts Cummins engines into their equipment.

Agriculture committee  The dealers have been very good at recognizing that those lawyers coming up from Toronto have deeper pockets than farmers. It is true that this is a trend across North America, where the owners of what we call estate lots are buying a lot of smaller pieces of equipment. As you

Agriculture committee  So with a PTO turning backwards, the tractor would be useless. So those are a couple of concerns we've heard of, and this is where the Canada Revenue Agency or the Canada Border Services Agency should be a little bit more diligent about seeing what's coming into this country.

Agriculture committee  There are a couple of areas of concern there. So far most of the tractors coming in are smaller tractors. Most of them would be under 40 horsepower; there wouldn't be too many of them over 100 horsepower, from our observations, but let me tell you a couple of concerns that dealer

Agriculture committee  Yes, we have taken a look at that. I'm not sure if this made it into the letter to the Minister of Finance, but the simplest way of describing it is to just move everything up by 10%. Class 10, which is at 30%, would be moved up to 40%; class 12, which is at 20%, would be moved u

Agriculture committee  I suppose the market size in Canada is not nearly as large as the United States, so that would have something to do with it. I'm not sure of any other concerns about spare parts. I was going to pick up on one point earlier about the prices of equipment. One thing that the indus

Agriculture committee  It depends on the manufacturer. It's either Deere or CNH, I think, whose warranty covers.... I'll have to get back with the precise number, but the manufacturers recognize that biodiesel is entering the market, and they will honour the warranty when biodiesel is used, up to a cer

Agriculture committee  The increase in the CCA rate would indeed encourage the acquisition and purchase of new tractors, and the new tractors coming off the line today have to adhere to the new EPA tier three standards for diesel emissions. The quicker you can get the new equipment, the new tractors, i

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, John, for your kind comments. I think it's important to note that the dealers and the manufacturers all share a common goal, and that is, to get the right equipment into the hands of the farmers and make sure that equipment is worki