We had a commission on the future of agriculture. A lot of what you've talked about came out in that, trying to brand P.E.I., and I'm optimistic that we'll make some progress. But we have to recognize the core problem in agriculture. If you go into a grocery store, there are 50,000 items on offer, but in reality that's simply different combinations of corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes, and beef, commodities that are sourced from processors at the lowest possible price, wherever they can get them in the world.
When I first started in agriculture in 1987, we were moving into the free trade agreements and agriculture exports went through the roof. The trickle-down economics isn't even a drip at the farm gate. For those whole 20 years, rather than envisioning what they can build, farmers have been trying to save what previous leaders have put in place, such as supply management and orderly marketing. We've lost single-desk selling in the hogs. If you graph it, you can see that it tanked out.
So the core problem, in my view, is not the lack of the quality, or COOL, or regulation; it's the lack of market power for farmers because processors and retailers have been consolidating. I don't envision how you can ever break that up, personally. The solution is to give farmers some marketing power where they can work as a group to develop a national food policy, as has been mentioned. I have no disagreement with any of that.
That's government's role both federally and provincially, to establish the regulatory authority for farmers to implement that and negotiate from a position of strength with these people. That's the core. All this other stuff is really positive potential that could be developed individually as producers, or my preference would be to work with the researching community and the food processors and really develop an industry.
I'm talking too much, am I?