Thank you.
I was so impressed with all your presentations. I can clearly see that if you represent the future of our farmers, then we have a great future. I know we have to work on some things to help the industry survive, but clearly, if you're a representative of future farming, then we're going to be all right. I sure appreciate you all being here to share your expertise, experience, and your passion for your industry.
I heard a lot of really great ideas from this panel today. I won't touch on them all because we're very limited for time, obviously, and I want to allow you some time to answer my questions. Certainly I heard a couple of interesting ideas that I think I probably hadn't heard before.
Barb, you mentioned the idea of limiting programs or subsidies to beginning farmers and tying that to education. As you stated, subsidies do get recapitalized into the farm to help beginning farmers. I don't think anyone on this panel, as far as our young farmers are concerned, want to rely on government programs. I think you all want to rely on your land, your own hard work, your own ingenuity, and your own business sense. You want to see something that'll allow that to happen and be profitable. Certainly I can clearly see the idea of help to get a kick-start and being able to rely on your own business sense, which I know you all have.
Mr. Voldeng, your optimism struck me because you said you saw a great opportunity for you as a young farmer getting into the industry. When you see the average age of farmers increasing, the optimism you have in seeing this as an opportunity is the kind of thing we need to see--the passion and the opportunity you see there. So I sure appreciate that.
As I said, there were so many good ideas I can't go over them all.
What I want to do is very similar to what I've done as we've gone across the country, and that is open it up to all our young farmers. Obviously each one of you will have to be brief because we are limited to a small amount of time here, but could each one of the young farmers briefly share with us on two questions that tie together?
Those of you who have taken over the farm from your parents, or are maybe a third- or fourth-generation farmer, what do you see being the biggest difference in the industry between your parents' or your grandparents' day and your day? What do you see as the one thing that could be done to help make farming profitable, outside of government programs? I'll throw that open.
Maybe I'll start with you, Stuart, and we'll work our way down.