Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A few years ago when my wife and I sat down and developed a long-term plan for our farm, we said we had to operate in a manner where we had control over as many factors as possible. The one thing we very quickly realized is that with Wheat Board grain we do not have control over that. So we made it a very obvious choice, or a very pronounced goal, to minimize the effect of the Canadian Wheat Board on our farm, because we always made more money on non-board crops.
The problem is that when you grow crops on the Prairies, wheat is a natural adaptor to the prairie habitat, and we have to grow wheat. If we grow wheat and if it's exported--and most of the wheat is exported, as was mentioned earlier--it has to go through the Wheat Board. So we minimize the amount of wheat that we can grow through the board because we can always better manage our individual businesses by selling non-board grains. Our wheat acreage is broken into a large acreage of CPS wheat, which we market through our hog business because we have the control over when we sell it and what the price is. Again, we can't do that with export wheat.
I think if you checked out my record you'd see we operate a farm as a business to be profitable. I don't think you'll ever find me on the record anywhere crying for more government subsidies, or anything in that manner, or more support to the agricultural industry because I can't make money growing wheat or canola or something. I try to manage my own business. It's very difficult to manage my own business marketing wheat through the Canadian Wheat Board.