I'm not really sure what the answer is. I'm not sure what's going on over in Europe. But a number of years ago there was a situation called the land bank that I did bring up in a meeting with Alex Atamanenko in Ottawa.
Briefly, just to throw it on the table, I don't think the answer is that the government have more hold or long-term hold on our personal property. I don't think we're looking for more government control. We're looking for fairer prices in the marketplace, which have been absent consistently for years and years. That's the problem. If we were actually running our businesses at a profit like normal businesses do....
I've run five businesses. I've owned two. When I married my husband and got into farming, the first instinct I had was to run, because my God, I had no idea that there was so much government control. I don't think that's the solution. I don't think that's the direction we need to be going. We need to really assess why it is that family farms cannot get paid for the high-quality product we have been producing. We've had this pushed on us and pushed on us that high quality, plus efficiency.... We've adopted all the efficiencies known to mankind and God. We have the highest quality. It's world-recognized. We still can't get paid.
The problem is that there needs to be more analysis as to where that dollar is going. We started having a review in the beef industry a number of years ago. I don't know where it went. It fizzled and died.
I think there is more government accountability to big business--the Cargills and Monsantos of the world--than there is to the farm producer. That is the equation that needs to change, and that's going to take the global mentality changing.
We're hearing that the cheap food policy in Mexico pushed half a million farmers off their land. Costa Rican farmers are suffering. American farms are suffering. Canadian farms are suffering. We are the people who are feeding you. We can't stay in business. We're over-regulated to death. It's like the government has us in a box and is sitting on the lid. It doesn't matter what we do, we can't get out of it.
I don't think farm producers are going to say, yeah, bring the government on and get them involved in a 40-year equation on my farm. Personally, that's not for me.