Sure, I'd love to comment.
First of all, Kory, simply to let you know, we have 65 million acres of arable land in Saskatchewan and 35 million acres of crops, so we have a lot of acres.
There is quite an interesting debate going on here about corn availability. Clearly, we think Saskatchewan is the only province in the nation that is a net exporter of feed grain, so we clearly believe we have a specific advantage.
I want to go back to the issue of producer ownership, and there are a couple of comments I'll make. One is that capital goes where the best return exists. With all due respect, that sounds nice on paper, but that's not the reality in the United States today. Ethanol plants are built in communities where the large multinationals would never build an ethanol plant. That's because of a will within the community to make it happen.
One of the things to address primary producers that hasn't been talked about is this. I made a point of travelling throughout the U.S. to visit ethanol plants owned by producer groups. The common scenario is this: Harry hauls 50,000 bushels of corn to the ethanol plant and gets paid $2.25--in fact, I'll give you a specific example, a particular plant in Minnesota. Twice a year the producer gets a document from the ethanol plant and the ethanol plant says, Harry, you hauled 50,000 bushels of grain and you got $2.25 a bushel; you also got a dividend in that six-month period; we also had a capital appreciation of the plant in that six-month period. Harry, you didn't get $2.25 a bushel, you got $8.07 a bushel.
If you really want to do something for primary producers, you've got to get them into the value chain, and not as a minority piece. You must get them as a majority, running and owning that plant. That's the first part. I have a strong opinion about that. I think it's important to understand where that opportunity lies.
The bigger picture for all of us here, I think, is how do we get there from here? There are some dramatic differences in the American model compared to ours. They use tremendous money guarantee programs. From a federal government perspective, in terms of contingent liability, they book 10% of that contingent liability cost. In our country, based on the treasury branch, we need to book 100% of that contingent liability cost. I think that's inappropriate. That's my understanding, Mr. Easter.
The last part we need to talk about from the primary producer perspective, particularly in rural Canada, particularly in western Canada, Mr. Easter, that I want to respond to is the issue of the Canadian Grain Commission and specific crop varieties that we think will be home runs in the ethanol industry. We can grow specific crops today that will yield 70 and 80 and 90 bushels per acre in dry land farming, which is dramatically higher than the traditional hard spring wheats of 30 and 40 bushels per acre. We have issues with KVD registration, and we have some nuances with the Canadian Grain Commission that we have to work on, but that will be a key opportunity for primary producers in terms of taking Saskatchewan's example of $135 of gross revenue per acre and moving it close to $300 per acre of gross revenue, and we can do it quickly.