Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to present to the committee today. I know the committee didn't get an opportunity to head a little farther east to the great province of Newfoundland and Labrador, but I certainly appreciate your accommodating me. Someone from the Federation of Agriculture will be presenting later on.
A lot of great things are happening in agriculture in Newfoundland and Labrador. We have an industry that's worth about half a billion dollars. It employs about 6,200 people. When you look at a small province like Newfoundland and Labrador, that's quite significant compared with the fishery—it's currently worth about $1 billion.
So agriculture is certainly a significant player, but it's an industry in a lot of respects that's really underdeveloped.
The first topic I'm going to talk about is the HR file and the challenges we face. Currently the average age of farmers is quickly approaching 60 years in our province. Right across the country that's something that's facing the industry. Training can be defined in three particular ways: in a formal way, such as a degree or a certificate; informal, where you can pick up certain courses involved in business management, which could be something related to the farm; and unformal, which is how most people are trained in the agriculture industry. My mom or my dad would teach me how to drive a tractor, or how they do the accounting, or how they do the proposal writing, or whatever it might be.
This is a huge challenge that we're facing in our province. We need to develop training initiatives and to ensure that the appropriate training delivery mechanisms are in place to ensure that the needs, and especially the skills gap, are being addressed. We need to ensure that the next generation of farmers have the skills needed to make agriculture work. That's simply how it has to be.
We need to focus on business management, on enterprise development. Training also needs to focus on how we're going to anticipate food safety, animal welfare issues, and environmental concerns. These are all areas where farmers, and young farmers especially, have to anticipate how this is going to affect our particular industries. If it's going to be a sustainable industry, as young farmers we need to be able to anticipate what is going to be happening, especially in the next five or ten years, when agriculture is at such a critical point.
Also, there are the recruitment and retention fees. We need to have training initiatives to make agriculture attractive for new entrants and for young people who may want to consider getting into this particular field. We need to frame it so that it is a potential career option.
The next generation of APF must also address the importance of agricultural awareness. As a young farmer in my province, and as an active participant at the national level with the Canadian Young Farmers Forum as well, I see great importance in getting public support for agriculture. It's very important for the long-term viability of producers in our province, and also producers right across this country, if we're going to be successful as young farmers and if the agriculture industry is going to be successful as a whole.
The second topic I would like to discuss, and this is very relevant to our particular province, is strategic growth. This is where regional differences really come into play. As I mentioned, we have a growing industry in our province. In a lot of ways it's underutilized and it's underdeveloped. We have huge potential in areas such as the berry industry, for instance. I'll use blueberries as an example. We had farm receipts of somewhere around half a million dollars, compared with Nova Scotia's, which are up around $80 million in farm cash receipts. There's a little bit of difference there, but there's a huge opportunity, and we need to really foster it. This is where we need good research and development to grow that particular sector.
We can look at the red meat sector as well. There's probably a revenue stream of about $100 million in Newfoundland and Labrador in that sector, and producers in Newfoundland and Labrador represent 2% of it. So there's a huge opportunity there as well, and in the vegetable sector and in the fur industry.
I'm also a fur farmer. I grew up on a fox farm, two hours west of St. John's, and there are huge opportunities in that particular industry. We produced probably somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 pelts this year. By 2010 or 2012, we're looking at producing somewhere in the vicinity of a million pelts, so there's huge potential and huge growth there. And when you compare it to places like Nova Scotia, there are upwards of 1 million or 1.2 million. There are huge opportunities there.
As well, the secondary processing sector and the value-added side of agriculture certainly serve as huge growth areas and incredible opportunities for agricultural development. We can look at the dairy industry, for instance, and the potential there for making cheese in our province, and yogurt production as well.
It's not only for agricultural development, but it's also extremely important to the rural communities and towns in our province, for social development and economic development. So there's a huge piece here in terms of agricultural development, not only from the industry side, but also from the rural development side.
But in order to do this, we need a two-faceted approach. We need awareness of the opportunities that are in our province, to encourage young people and new entrants to look at this particular industry, and they also need a financial well for all. It's extremely difficult to get into agriculture, and while there are huge entrepreneurial opportunities to get into this particular industry, we need the programming—and the right programming—for a new intern or a young person to be able to get into this particular industry. We look at programs like the Farm Improvement and Marketing Cooperatives Loans Act. This particular program needs to be accessed by young farmers, but the restrictions need to be brought down so that young farmers can avail themselves of programs such as this.
The final point I'd like to make is on organizational funding. As I said, our organization is an active participant in the Canadian Young Farmers Forum, and we need to ensure that funding is maintained for this particular organization, mainly for the leadership or professional development part. It's going to be extremely important, if young farmers are going to be successful in this industry. We need to consolidate our voice, provincially and nationally. So it's extremely important—and the networking opportunities that come with that are extremely important. We need to ensure the organizational funding is there for young farmers so we can effectively lobby our MPs and government to ensure that we have a sustainable and viable agricultural industry.
On behalf of Newfoundland and Labrador young farmers, I thank you for the opportunity.