Thank you, Larry, for allowing me to speak at the last minute.
I want to speak because I have some good news, and I'd like to put maybe a last nice spin to this. I also have some answers to some of the questions raised in the first panel.
Ten years ago, almost to this day, I became a new farmer in this area and farmed sheep for six years. But today I'm working for an organization called FarmStart. We're non-profit and we're training farmers across Ontario, in collaboration with OMAFRA, which is the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, and other organizations. We have grown from two to eight staff in the past year, thanks to Trillium, AMI, Metcalf, OMIF, and others.
We are training a new generation of farmers, as we call them. To define that, perhaps it's safe to say that it's the kind of farming where the farmer is the price setter. We're trying to really promote the idea of a viable business model.
We also have a program called FarmLINK, which addresses something mentioned earlier, partnering new farmers with land and partnering new farmers with mentors or farmers with set knowledge that they can transfer to the next generation. We have just hired somebody to start looking at non-family succession. I hear a lot. I went to the Junior Farmers' Association conference. We hear a lot about farm succession, but we really need to have that knowledge transfer to a non-family member.
I would just note, too, on farm acquisition, that Small Farm magazine for this month arrived yesterday in the mailbox, and there's an article in there about two Neustadt farmers, two young couples who've just bought land in Grey County. They talk about their story and how they managed to pay for their farm and get ready to start farming. It's a very good article.
Currently we have two Exploring Your New Farm Dream courses running in Toronto. We had 38 spots and 65 applicants. I would say, but I'm not exactly sure, 50% of them are new Canadians. So perhaps the farmers of the future are people coming in from another country. Tomorrow, for example, I meet a man from Dubai who is looking to start farming here. He farms vegetables on 400 acres back in Dubai.
Our problem with our new farmers is that they don't qualify for the funding through Growing Your Farm Profits. We are working with OMAFRA to develop a program that will hopefully allow these new farmers to access the cost sharing so that they can go on to do further training.
Other provinces are watching what we're doing. There are already four that want to join our FarmLINK program, so we're going to make that national. I guess we're the guinea pigs. The other provinces are looking and hoping to start something similar in their own provinces.
Thanks again.