I appreciate that input. Actually, I appreciate all of these interventions, because it lets me know that people are listening. Sometimes I'm afraid that people aren't paying attention to me, that it's like home, people pretend they're listening, but they're not really. When someone picks up on a small point like that, I know that they are hanging on every word, so I'll be particularly careful.
The bottom line is that there are other barriers out there sometimes to some of our creative farmers who are looking for different ways to generate revenue from their land base and to do things. I think that's another area that we could look at--to try to identify some of these other barriers and approaches. The insurance companies aren't going to probably change their policies in response to a single farmer who's trying to create a new business opportunity, but they might to government, which may come along and encourage them to change the provisions of their policies.
Mr. Chair, that's number 11. I want to move on to my twelfth point. I had these 12 yesterday. Do you know what the crazy thing is? When we were here two days ago--it seems like two days ago, but it was only yesterday--I said I had 12. But do you know what's exciting? And I was thinking about this last night. Actually, there are more than 12 points that could be made. I have saved the big one for last, the one that I feel very passionately about and that I'm going to want to really make a pitch for here to my colleagues.
This really has to do with the whole local food, farm-fresh wave that's building out there. Mr. Chairman, some of my own colleagues, maybe some of my own colleagues right in my own caucus, who are farmers, when I first brought this up thought maybe I was stretching a bit here, that this wasn't necessarily a farm issue or directly an agriculture issue. Some of them pointed out to me the fact that I'm actually not a farmer and that I'm looking at things from a funny point of view. But I persevered and I said the funny point of view that I'm looking at these issues from is a consumer's point of view. I talk about food issues as well as farm issues.
Here's what I believe. I believe when we, as members of this committee or members of Parliament, talk about farm issues or talk about agriculture issues, a large percentage of Canadians, and unfortunately a growing percentage of Canadians, who aren't connected to the farm, who live in urban or suburban areas, tune us out. And that's not fair, but I think it's true.
I think that a lot of people, when they hear about farmers being in trouble, or this or that, roll their eyes and say, “Oh, there go the farmers again; we've heard this before”, and they don't pay any attention because they don't think it connects to them. With respect to many of these issues that are on the table, if we change the language and talk about them as food issues, all of a sudden we have a much larger potential audience. Food is important to everybody. When you start talking about food, even people who live in our largest cities know that it is relevant to them in a sense. Even just from a communications point of view, if the farm and the agricultural community too, when possible or when relevant, cast an issue in the context of food rather than in the context of farm and agriculture, I think we can build and find allies, alliances. If that is old wine in new bottles, then that's fine.
This whole local food movement is growing. Again, I'll go back to our trip to Washington two weeks ago. I found it interesting. I think on three or four occasions, at three or four different meetings, when we were talking about the U.S. Farm Bill and what we were doing there and international trade, somehow the issue of local food popped up.
I think in particular about when we were at the NFU. The executive director said.... I don't remember the exact words, but basically, when we talked about the future and what they saw on the horizon, he said, the next big thing we see is this whole focus on local food and food quality and food safety: where our food comes from, how fresh it is. We're learning more and more all the time that food freshly harvested has health and nutritional benefits that even that same food has that maybe has been sitting in a box or sitting in a box that's sitting in a train or sitting in a ship or in a truck and has been transported hundreds or thousands of kilometres. There are some advantages.
I think this is possibly the greatest opportunity for many Canadian farmers. I recognize that for parts of Canada—for example, out on the prairies and in the grain-producing areas such as where David is from—a stand at the end of your laneway selling wheat by the tractor trailerload maybe isn't something that's practical. If you didn't have to sell it to the Wheat Board, even then you probably still couldn't sell it at the end of your laneway. But where I live, an hour north of Toronto, most of my farmers live an hour—in the middle of the night, and probably two hours in the middle of the day—from four million people. There are great opportunities, I think, for local food.
I've talked to people about this, and farmers are bringing this to me. Some of them are what I'll call the crunchy granola crowd; they're the former hippie types you might expect to hear this from. But I've heard it from some pretty mainstream farmers too: the guy with the two-ton diesel pickup is also talking to me about the opportunities they see—the hard business opportunities they see—through producing local food.
It's not creating a wave; it's riding this wave that consumers are demanding. Consumers are increasingly sophisticated. Consumers are increasingly demanding more and more from the companies and the individuals who supply them with the things they want and need, such as food.
Just recently the problems with wheat gluten imported from China raised a lot of issues. It's some kind of crazy irony that it took the death of a bunch of pets to put food safety on the North American radar screen, but it has happened.
I think there are unbelievable opportunities for lots of farmers in Canada, for young farmers in Canada, to take a farm—where I'm from, possibly a 100-acre farm rather than a 500-acre farm or a 1,000-acre farm—and actually make a living.
There's a growing demand for it. What I say, when I talk to my non-farm constituents, is that I think there are a lot of good reasons why somebody may—