Thank you.
I agree, Canada is a leader internationally in science and technology, and in agriculture and innovation. I studied at the University of Guelph in the early eighties. I've seen a lot of farmers embrace a lot of technologies, but as I said, technology has often not embraced us as far as our bottom line goes. We need to have appropriate technologies--my emphasis is on the word “appropriate”--whether that is plant breeding, livestock, or the equipment we use on the farm, to ensure our bottom dollar is affected in a positive way. The methane digesters, which some people are developing on their farms, and biodiesels are good technologies, but they need a lot more work.
We do have an issue in the National Farmers Union with growing food for fuel. The world stockpile of food is at an all-time low. I was in New York City this September, and they only have three days of food at one time. It's the same in Washington and in Canada. Around the world, stockpiles are at an all-time low. A lot of these technologies are actually creating poverty and hunger. We have to be very careful about taking good arable land out of production for growing food and growing fuel instead.
The conversion ratio for what it actually costs in natural resources to grow that food that's going to be turned into fuel just isn't there yet. We need to do a lot more work on that technology before we get too excited about it. And of course a lot of industries are going to profit very nicely from that technology, especially the seed and technology companies that are pushing for that.
So I would provide a caution on that. But certainly I'm a progressive farmer, and I embrace what I believe is going to be environmentally and morally responsible. I weigh things a lot more broadly than just embracing the latest technology.