I would suggest to you that for young people in this country, the essence of the argument is the language of farming. Yes, farmers are custodians of the land—that's true—but farmers are business people. The land is an asset. The market is huge. When I deal with farmers in Australia, they never talk about family farms. Every farm in Australia is a farm business that's owned by a family, and if you look at it from that perspective, it's also a family farm; but it's the outcome and the output and the ability to create value for consumers and differentiate and link food safety, link food and health, get into functional foods. It's very high value added.
I talked about the celiac issue. Farm Pure produces oat pasta. Celiacs, only 3% of whom have been identified, have a terrible life. They can't eat. In Regina, there's a plant that produces pure oat pasta. Okay. Now the issue becomes whether the regulatory regime is set up to reward differentiation or to reward harmony. Farmers are, of course, entrepreneurs. The land in Canada represents an enormous asset for entrepreneurs to dream and work on. Some of the mechanisms in place don't reward that the way they do in other businesses, and I made the case about energy and mining and what not. There are ways the Government of Canada could see investors mobilize capital, as the 196 shareholders in Farm Pure do. Go to an annual meeting of this company. These are people from all across western Canada. They're dreaming about the future, and they're betting on it. I'm not saying it's an easy business at all, but it is a business, and business and entrepreneurship are about people being able to live their dreams.
That's the language that has to be associated with this industry. Saskatchewan Agrivision in this province has a competition to identify the 500 best farmers in Saskatchewan. I think there are some people in Saskatchewan who don't think there are 500 good farmers. That's BS. They're great farmers, and the competition is all about the 501st, because if you come 501st, then next year you want to be in the 500.
When we change the language of agriculture so that the 500 are now 600 are now 10,000, we won't have to worry. Look what's happened to the value of land in this province with the ethanol announcements. It's amazing what's going on across western Canada now on the farm. But are the public structures set up in a way to handle what an entrepreneur needs? Is there a responsive regulatory regime that recognizes differentiation, that cuts the distance between the producer and the end user?
It's that kind of environment that I think has to be worked on.