We give farmers the choice of choosing the price, depending on what the daily market price is that they want to hedge, and it's entirely up to them whether they think that's a good price or not.
We have seen a very large run-up in the wheat market, for instance, in the course of the last 12 months or so. Obviously, when the prices were starting to rise, coming off what has been for many years a very low base, both in Canada and in North America there are a lot of farmers who thought these were prices they should start pricing at.
We're talking about farmers choosing prices themselves, on an individual basis, and then we're talking about a pooling system that actually prices throughout the year. So in a sense, we're probably not talking about apples and apples here. We're probably talking about apples and oranges, in a way. It's the same issue as what might be the price over the border on any particular day and what the pool pays, because they're not really the same concept.
The pool prices throughout the year. The pool had the opportunity of pricing throughout the year and therefore captured a segment of the higher prices. Some producers priced at a lower number and some producers priced at a higher number. Those who priced at numbers lower than the advance rate of the pool—all producers actually receive the advance rate—basically are going to have to refund some money because they did actually price lower than.... That's their individual choice. They have their own risk management to worry about.
What we are doing with those pricing options is giving them the choice about prices they might like or dislike. That's the choice they make, and sometimes they'll do better than others and sometimes they'll do worse than others. This year the pool has done better than some farmers, but on the other hand, because it's an average price through the season, it might do as well as those farmers who might have chosen to price at much higher prices, and some obviously did.