Thanks, Chair.
Thank you, each of you, for being here this morning.
This is a very important study that we're doing. Our committee has been all across Canada. We've been into B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, here today, Nova Scotia tomorrow, and then P.E.I. We are trying to cover all of Canada, and as many commodities as we can. We're also visiting sites so that we get a feel for exactly what is happening on the ground--it's not all just “committee work”--and have discussions like this, so thank you for your input.
To follow up on that discussion about buying locally, I think that is key. It comes back to the profitability that Richard was talking about. That's a key motivator for young people to get involved in farming. But that's also linked to people buying local produce. As Becky was saying, it's not always apparent; when people are used to buying strawberries all year round, and yet it's very seasonal here in Canada, they don't necessarily notice the transition: “Oh; the strawberries I purchased in February aren't the same strawberries I could purchase in June.” They don't look for those differences, they just buy strawberries. So I think there is education that could go on there, and I think that will help with profitability.
To Karl, in your opening remarks you mentioned that you went from 11 dairy cows to 200. I want to ask what challenges you faced in doing that. This is part of the buy-in, how young farmers buy into farming. You bought in with 11 cows, I guess, and you grew it up to 200. How did you manage to grow it up to 200 with the cost of quota, the cost of cattle, etc.?