Your question was what government should do about what we think of as price gouging.
I don't really see it that way. I think that farmers need to have market control, and we have some now with the institutions that are in place. The market control we would like to have, of course, would be to say that you need to sell this loaf of bread for $2 and give us 50¢ of it. That's not going to happen, obviously, with the kind of marketplace we live in. We have to be careful that the institutions that protect us and give us the best chance at this marketplace are left intact.
I don't see regulation as being an issue here, at least in the part of the industry that I'm talking about. I refer to the time a couple of years ago when the price of wheat went to $8, $9, or $10 and the price of bread in the store went up 20¢ a loaf or something like that. The farmers were basically blamed by the consumer advocates, saying that because the farmers are getting more for their wheat, now you have to pay more for your bread. That was absolute nonsense, and nobody I'm aware of ever took issue with the people who were saying that the farmers were now gouging another 20¢ for a loaf of bread because they're getting paid. Considering that the value of the wheat in the loaf of bread is so minor that....
In the context in which farmers are seen in the supermarkets of the country, we play a very small role. It would be great if we were able to educate our consumers with the idea that if they paid a little more for a loaf of bread and that increase in the value of the loaf of bread went directly to the farmer, then we'd really have something. But it wouldn't happen, because if the price of bread went up, everybody in that whole chain would take their percentage, and the farmer would end up with very little more than we get now.
I don't think we're looking at regulation. What we want to accomplish is to keep the institutions that are actually working on our behalf and giving us at least some modicum of control in the marketplace.