What's happened to us in our farms is that we used to do about 100 acres of sprouts and about 50, or more than that, of cauliflower. We kept cutting it back because we could not find the labour. What eventually happened was that our marketers went to the States and our competition has our business now.
On a side note, a few months earlier we were negotiating prices for cauliflower. Our marketer and processor said to us, “It's going to be this much for a cauliflower: there's no negotiation or we're going to China.”
Last year, they started giving us cauliflower again, because a law was supposed to come in on labelling to show where the product was coming from. But since that's not there any more, or it's changed a bit, they've said, “Too bad.”
Partly this problem came about because back in the late nineties, when we could not get enough labour, the processors had to look around the world for where they could find another product. I guess they learned cheaper ways to get product in here. That's our loss and their gain, and it's getting used against us now.
On pesticides, down south they can use a lot of pesticides on strawberries. We were well known for our strawberries in the lower mainland, and now we're down from about 70-plus acres to 7 acres, just to keep a little fresh market going on.
They're allowed to spray stuff we're not allowed to spray, but they're allowed to bring it up here, which is not fair. Their berries used to taste like cardboard, but they taste pretty good now and they look pretty red and they're year round. So pesticides are an issue.
The cost of machinery is such that when you're buying a tractor, you may as well buy a Mercedes-Benz; it's similar. You can't just go with a two-wheel drive with the weather we have. Perhaps there could be some sort of government loan for young farmers, or incentives to get cheaper machinery.