My name is Gerard Mol. I immigrated from Holland 23 years ago with my father. We started out with a potato farm. We've been diversifying a bit over the last eight to ten years, and we started growing canola, corn, soybeans, flax, different commodities.
We bought a machine to make fuel, to start threshing for the canola oil for fuel and for human consumption. I didn't get there yet for human consumption, but we'll try to get there. We also export canola to Japan and we're going to have different crops starting after this year to also export to Japan. We're doing some research on four or five different crops. That's a little bit of background there.
I came here when I was 17, basically. We started to invest right away and, what Morgan just said, started to farm a little bit. I went to Farm Credit; at that time they wouldn't look at me. LDC at that time wouldn't look at me. Anyway, the guy that sold me the land was willing to lend me the money for the year, and that's how I started it, kind of on my own a little bit. Anyway, there is opportunity, but the thing is that was 23 years ago, and that's changed.
I'm glad to have the opportunity to speak to you today, and I also have a time issue. I'm busy in the fields and all that stuff.
Agriculture to P.E.I. is like the cod fishery was to Newfoundland, I find. We all know what happened to Newfoundland--the cod left and Newfoundland was in trouble. I think it's the same idea with agriculture here in P.E.I. When agriculture leaves P.E.I., we'll have nothing left, and that's a serious issue. I think we're not too far away from that. We have to give a look a little bit of how we can avoid that, of course. I think we are already too far away from turning the wheels 100% back, but maybe we can.
What happens is it's really becoming a global market out there, and that's an issue. We are an exporter province, and we lost markets due to political issues, transportation issues, and also other people didn't know how to farm, more or less.
This takes a lot of adapting to the marketplace for farmers. We can't find markets for our products like we used to. I never expected to become an exporter in certain things. I thought I would a farm. But I think this is what we are heading into. Food safety becomes a big market issue. We as farmers produced safe foods for a hundred years, and also still now, so I find that is a big issue. Why put extra cost on some of the shoulders of the farmers?
We have an investor program now. It used to be CAIS before. As a farmer, I don't like to use these programs. Give me cost of production plus a little bit more to survive and I'll be happy. But in the last couple of years, every farmer had high hopes that some money can come out of these payment programs to stay in business. I really think the program is not great, but the thing is, it's great that the government is willing to help. But this program is not working. We have an Olympic average. I think that is something that's got to be thrown out. Maybe I'm wrong on that; maybe some people can say that.
I diversified my farm over the last eight, nine, ten years, and it seems to be the more I did to diversify, the less I was getting out of this program. It's not because I am making money on this diversification, but I'm just below the profit level, and whenever you have a sliding number of profit, then you can't get any money out of it. So the Olympic average is working and the cost of fertilizer spray and seed is all going up. The highs and the lows are not there any more, so there is no payout any more.
That's that, and I have a couple of other points I would like to mention.
The U.S. dollar is a big issue, and the euro right now. McCain is bringing french fries into North America now from Europe, because of the U.S. dollar.
Food safety--GMOs is an issue. I don't know how we can tackle some of these things, but I think we should have a look at some of this stuff. Seed production is also in the control of some of these high, big companies, and I think it's got to go more into the farmers' hands.
I'll leave it at this, and maybe you'd like to get discussions going afterwards and see what we can do.