Thank you, first of all, for being here.
My name is Marianne Van Burck, and together with my husband Hans we are farming in the Melfort area in Saskatchewan. We have three children. One of our children attends the University of Guelph and another one is at Cornell.
It's very interesting. An article in The Western Producer last week stated that 40% of our farmers are over 50 and 10% of our farmers are under 39. There is a big gap. We have to do something. With our Canadian Outstanding Young Farmers Program, with our recognition program, we try to encourage the younger generation to come up. This is a huge problem, for young farmers to start. They hear of programs that are in place, but they also don't know how to activate those programs, how to get to them. It would be very helpful if the government made the programs more available to the young farmers starting out.
Thank you for the opportunity.