You just talk a lot.
My background is probably similar. Being the last guy to talk in a panel means you're going to sound repetitive and say a lot of things that have already been mentioned. We have a good group of people here giving good background on different aspects.
I come from a family that originated in Holland. My family came here in 1948. It's similar to a lot of the folks that farm up and down the side roads. Grandpa bought his first farm in 1952. They had ten kids. Three of them were boys. They all farmed and all established their own operations. We had 50-some cousins out of those ten uncles and aunts, and out of those 50-some cousins, there are two of us left farming full time.
It's not unusual. Agriculture is probably the most innovative and most efficient industry there is out there, and it's basically going to take less people to produce more food as time goes on. I think that's just the reality of the situation.
Just because you grow up on a farm doesn't give you the entitlement to say that you are able to farm. Some folks think that if you grow up on a farm, it gives you the right to farm. That's changing. Farming is changing. It's becoming more and more business-oriented. The skill sets are changing.
I received my post-secondary education in the late eighties and early nineties. I went to the Ridgetown college for a couple of years. I was in the degree program at the University of Guelph for a bit. The skill sets they taught us there gave us a good base to work off of, but when I look at what I do today, a lot of education still has to occur there in in order to keep yourself up to pace. The technology changes. When I see what we're doing today with technology and electronics, whether it's guidance systems or the business aspect, there wasn't a whole lot of that in our education programs 20 years ago. Those education programs have to continue to be revamped.
Another thing that's evident out in the countryside is that the average age of a farmer is in the neighbourhood of 58 or 59. There are statistics out there.
There are also statistics out there on the average net worth of a farmer. I know that a number of years ago, the net worth of an operator was under $1 million. I'm sure it's much more today, with the value of land.
If we look at what's going to happen in the next 10 or 15 years, a lot of those folks are going to retire. They're going to cash in the assets they worked for throughout their lives. Through inflation, they're fortunate enough to be worth a lot more than they ever anticipated.
If those folks don't have any kids who are going to stay on the farm, that net worth is going to leave this countryside. Whether through inheritance or willed through other means, it's going to leave the countryside--the little towns of Ilderton, Dresden, and Thamesville--and most likely end up in urban centres, where perhaps their kids ended up in.
One opportunity that the government needs to start looking at is how to use that net worth. If people retire and end up with a chunk of change, they need an opportunity to help reinvest it in our rural communities. I think there's an opportunity there.
There are a lot of young folks here who, if given the opportunity to borrow money in perhaps more ideal circumstances, might be able to carry on their tradition if they have the skill set and passion to carry it out. If you don't have passion in this industry, you're not going to make it.
So I think there should be an opportunity, such as through a financial institution. Obviously, the FCC has government ties where you could park money. Perhaps there's some type of GIC format where the government could offer a guarantee and some type of preferential interest rate. They could give that opportunity to beginning farmers to access the money or for value-added opportunities. I think there are lot of value-added processing opportunities that we haven't even hit on in this country.
It's very difficult to get any type of financing because of the risk involved. This would be an opportunity. If the older generation are looking to retire and sell the farm but would still like to be part of the industry, it would be a great opportunity to take advantage of that.
We have the safest, most wholesome food system of anywhere in the world. We keep on telling ourselves that. Being involved in farm politics--not so much right now--we sit in rooms like this, we look at each other, and we keep on telling each other how we have the most wholesome, safest food system of anywhere in the world.
But we don't go around telling anybody else that--perhaps the other 98% of the population that actually buys our food.
You know, if the government has the regulatory system in place and is proud...and we should be. We like to complain and bitch a lot about all the rules and regulations we have to jump through all the time, but it does give us the backing of that maple leaf. If you want to go around the world and talk to people who see a little maple leaf stamped on that food product that came from here, you'll hear a lot of faith in the quality of that product.
We need to tell our public. We need to talk about what agriculture does as an industry to this country, as well, and we need to make people understand.
Take this scenario where I have 50-plus cousins who chose different career paths other than agriculture. I counted it out one time, and there are another 100-and-some second cousins out there. Those kids aren't that far removed from the farm. All those cousins used to come to Grandma and Grandpa's every summer and hang around the farm. They understand agriculture, to a certain degree, probably at a higher level than most of the people walking up and down the streets. Yet those kids are that much further removed, and I think if the general public had an understanding....
At the end of the day, when governments make decisions, a lot of the decisions are based on what public opinion is allowing them to do. That's just the reality of how our political system works. I think we need to have a higher level of understanding in the public so that when government does make investment in agriculture, it's greeted with open arms and an understanding of what value that means to it all.
I mentioned education. Innovation--that's what it's all about. We need to spend more time on innovation.
More to what Steve mentioned as well, about jurisdiction, I think you should give all of the responsibility for income support-based programming to the provincial governments. I think the federal government should just do the overarching policy around regulation, around innovation, and the higher level.
The speed of how government works is so bloody slow that it's as frustrating as all get-out. I don't know how many umpteen times I've been to sessions like this where....
No offence, folks; glad that you're out here, and glad you came to Ilderton, but everyone goes around, gathers a whole lot of information, and you take it back to Ottawa. The pace of change happens way too slowly. Business happens way quicker than this.
I know that the intent is to help the process move along here, but we need to figure out a system. As Steve mentioned, we've spent many years lobbying both levels of government, and all it involves is finger-pointing back and forth. If some of these areas on agriculture policy were given to specific jurisdictions, then the decision that needed to be made, and the change that had to happen, could happen much quicker. I think that's necessary.
The last thing is baseline programming. Whatever you think the income support levels need to be, let's work on it. Taking farm organizations' time and governments' time to sit in rooms and lobby and lobby on income supports.... I know that the whole last group, and Marie-Anne and the coalition there, it just takes a whack of resources, people's time and energy, to achieve a certain level of something like this....
Yes, I'm almost done, Larry.
It takes everybody's time, it takes everybody's energy away, when we should be sitting around talking about a vision of agriculture, innovation, and the direction that we need to go. Something needs to be done. Is it here? Is it there? I'm not quite sure. Let's make a decision and go with it. After that, let's talk about all the stuff we should be spending time talking about.
Thanks.