Are you looking at using both canola and soybeans?
Evidence of meeting #57 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farm.
Evidence of meeting #57 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farm.
10:35 a.m.
Conservative
10:35 a.m.
Business Development Manager, Eastern Greenway Oils Inc.
Well, we started out with soybeans; we will probably be focusing in on canola. We're actually aiming toward mustard as the product that will probably fit our market, because you can't take the high-value food oil canola commodity that Canada prides itself on and make an industrial commodity out of it.
I'll just add to what Vince said about regulation. We're dealing with a western partner from Saskatoon who is trying to get mustard registered as a bio-pesticide. People use mustard as a rotation crop. They plow it down and think it's great. Agriculturalists will recommend it.
We had a feasibility study done, and it's going to take three to five years and over $1 million to get mustard meal registered. It has a legal patent developed by Ag Canada researchers 15 years ago, and all it involves is taking the meal from mustard and spreading it on your lawn or your strawberry crops to kill nematodes or cinch bugs. It's pretty simple: you grow the plant, plow it down green, and you can use it. It's beyond me why it's going to take three to five years and a million bucks to get it registered as a bio-pesticide in Canada.
10:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
We hear stories like that all the time, unfortunately.
What's the oil content in mustard seed?
10:35 a.m.
Business Development Manager, Eastern Greenway Oils Inc.
It's about 36% to 40%.
10:35 a.m.
Business Development Manager, Eastern Greenway Oils Inc.
It's coming, yes.
10:40 a.m.
Business Development Manager, Eastern Greenway Oils Inc.
Well, they're working on it.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
10:40 a.m.
Business Development Manager, Eastern Greenway Oils Inc.
I did my master's thesis on rapeseed, when it was rapeseed. What they did to canola was take all the good agronomy, took the bad stuff out of it, and left the mustards alone. Now they're just going back—The Saskatoon program with Ag Canada is doing phenomenal leaps and bounds in putting the good agronomy back into the mustard, in the high-erucic types, for an industrial oil. They're coming, but—
That's our opportunity, if you talk about niche marketing. Western Canada will not want to contaminate its delivery stream with non-food or industrial oilseeds, so there's a real opportunity for somewhere east of Manitoba to start picking up on an industrial oil product based on our fine technology, and maybe we can contribute to this income at the farm gate.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Mr. Bettle and Mr. Speer, I really enjoyed your presentations.
I congratulate you, Mr. Bettle, for looking at how to do that farm succession planning and for taking on the creditor role yourself. I guess I'd like to know from you what you think we can do as a committee to make a recommendation back to government on how to provide the tools to people like you to provide that succession credit.
If you look at a lot of the financial lenders out there, the big players don't want to do it anymore, or it's going to be done, as you said, at a high cost, and we don't want to go down that path again. When I took out my first loan in 1982, it was at 21%. I don't want to go back to that. When I pass on my farm to my kids, I want to make sure they have it at an affordable rate. So I'm interested to know whether you have any ideas on that path.
Mr. Speer, you talked about needing to broaden our knowledge base, and I couldn't agree more. We actually had some young farmers present to the committee who had backgrounds not in agriculture but had masters degrees in marketing and commerce and those types of business management programs.
Should we be incorporating into all our ag schools that it should be just standard process to consider, if you're going to get a degree in agriculture or even a diploma with the intent to return to the farm, that this should be a component of your education; and also to consider whether or not you're getting the extension services you need from your provincial ag department that would provide that type of knowledge base as well?
Those are my final two questions for you two gentlemen.
10:40 a.m.
As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think one way government can help in this is through the tax system and how the succession is taxed when it rolls over. There are two things you have to guarantee when you turn your farm over to your children: you have to guarantee that you have a comfortable retirement and that your children are able to keep the farm going. Government can probably influence lenders in this country to look at more flexibility and innovation in the way they finance the succession of agriculture in Canada. They can look at that.
Those are basically the two things I think you can do to help on this side: the tax implications and flexibility in the lending. Not all farmers who are retiring are willing to spread this over a long time. Maybe they don't have a long time to spread it over; I don't know. I think the lending institutions will have to step in and try to make it happen.
10:40 a.m.
Dairy Producer, As an Individual
I feel that somebody graduating from an agricultural course with the idea of being a farm owner should have business management skills. That should be part of their training. I feel strongly about that.
I feel that within the extension work that's done with existing farmers, yes, there needs to be a recognition on the farmers' part that they need to improve their management skills and then there needs to be some way to do it. And it has to be a flexible way that can work around the farm schedule.
So I'm saying yes to both.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you.
We have some time for some supplementals. Mr. Bellavance.
10:40 a.m.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Mr. Kilfoil or Ms. Cormier, your association represents mainly medium-sized farms. Is that right?
10:40 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick
[Editor's Note: Inaudible ]
10:40 a.m.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Of every size? Very well.
Do you feel that a government policy to encourage and promote the survival of medium-sized family farms contradicts the need to make the agricultural sector, whether we are talking about small, medium-sized or large businesses, more competitive on the world level?
People sometimes say that we need to choose between these two goals. I personally feel that we can have a policy that both preserves medium-sized farms and helps other farms that need to export or may require some assistance to be more competitive in international markets.
Is that possible or is it unrealistic? I would like to hear your opinion and that of the other witnesses here today.
10:45 a.m.
First Vice-President, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick
Certainly for years it was preached to us that bigger was better, and I think in some cases now we're finding out that's not necessarily so. There are some of these mid-sized and even smaller-sized family farms that are a lot more able and better equipped to deal with the farm crisis. The bigger you are, the more risk you are under.
BRM is there to help us out, but for how long we don't know. Hopefully we can make it on our own. But I think and would hope there's a place for the family farm in Canada, and bigger is not always better. As I said a minute ago, a lot of these operations are a lot better equipped to deal with a financial crisis. They're less at risk.
10:45 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick
There should be programs to respond to everyone's needs, whether their farms are small or large.
There are small family farms in every region of Canada, which often sell their produce at local markets. These programs are needed across Canada. We need to find programs to support farmers and meet all their needs so that they can survive.
10:45 a.m.
Dairy Producer, As an Individual
I mentioned this management club that I was part of. It was rather interesting in that club that the highest-profit farm was a mid-sized farm. The next most profitable farm was the largest farm in the group, and the third most profitable farm was the smallest farm in the group. I think it goes back to management and skills, how they use the assets they have, and what their objectives are for the farm.
We should be able to keep all sizes of farms in the system. Some of the really small farms may have to make some changes. Over the long term they may not be viable, but for that generation it may be quite viable for them to carry on as a small farm.
That's just a comment.