The government's renewable fuel strategy has essentially four prongs. One is the establishment of mandates for minimum levels of ethanol and biodiesel in multi-fuels. The second is the establishment of support for the growth of the biofuel industry in Canada to meet that. The third relates to farmer participation--the ecoABC program--and the fourth is the sustainable fuels development fund, the $500 million fund. So I think the $2.2 billion you referred to is those four parts.
In terms of farmer participation, that's a core part of that, and the ecoABC program assists them in developing the equity to participate in the development of plants.
I think the issue you raise about food supply is clearly the one that has drawn a lot of attention, and a lot of studies are being done on the implications of what's driving the challenges around food supply, the recent spike in prices. I think what we've seen--as this committee is very much aware--is a long-term decline in prices, since at least the 1970s, for most commodities, but populated by spikes every so often. Every few years there's a spike in prices, and usually there's a supply response that brings prices back in line with that trend over a period of years.
When you look at what's driving the current increase in prices, the current spike, there are clearly a number of factors at play both on the supply side and the demand side. There is a very low stocks-to-use ratio in most products, and there is increasing demand from countries like China and India as changes in the nature of demand shift towards meat and so on. There are a whole host of factors at play and there's a debate about the relative weights of those.
But I think when you look at what we need to meet those mandates--in terms of world supply--it represents I think about 0.1% of production. We are price takers in Canada, so the prices are established on the world market for most of these commodities, and what Canada does has very little effect, as we found over the years when prices have been affected by a number of factors on the world stage.