Thanks.
I say I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel because some of the things are already changing. Certainly the market for pork is getting stronger. We went through the H1N1 fiasco last summer, and that's obviously behind us. We don't have the press that goes along with that. Some of the markets that were closed to us as a result of that have been reopened.
On the market demand in general, the recession--I almost said depression--we went through this last year is certainly coming to an end. Whether it has ended or not, it's certainly coming to an end, and we see people buying more meat products. Meat products are certainly sensitive to a recession. We see people buying a lot more pork. China was closed to us at one time, and that's opened up now. People are telling us that China will be the next Japan. There will be a huge increase in demand for us.
Certainly there is a significant decrease in production. American production is much less than ours. Our production is down something like 20% from 2005. That's a huge decrease. We know that Mexican production is down close to half of what it was. There's a tremendous amount of product moving from the U.S. and Canada into Mexico. So the demand for our product is certainly increasing.
I see some improvements in our input costs. Fuel prices are down from where they were when oil was $140. Fuel's still fairly expensive, but grains seem to be stabilizing, let's say. Proteins are getting a little less expensive.
We've had the question over the last two or three years that if things are so tough maybe we should just look into something else. People will obviously continue to eat pork, and most of us would like to be able to continue to produce that. I think there are better days ahead.
We just have to deal with some of these issues, as I mentioned with the CAIS, and try to protect the risk of carrying on in business and help make it easier for producers to access credit.