So it's very difficult to get into agriculture today. I talked about that in my opening remarks. I went to university and I also went to college. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree and I also have a business diploma. I had to pay money to get that education, and I'm still paying it off. I own part of my farming operation with my parents. I certainly got a lot of help from my parents to get into that farming operation in terms of land, infrastructure, and so forth.
It's very difficult to get into farming today. I imagine that it might have been a little bit easier back then, but it was still very challenging as well, because you didn't have a business plan. Today people are advocating that, and you need that business plan, really, if you want to go through a commercial bank or to the government to receive funding and so forth. But at the end of the day, it's very difficult to get into agriculture because of the high costs, and there are a lot of barriers preventing young people from getting involved.
If you have a student debt of $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, or $60,000--I have friends who are $60,000 in debt after university--and walk into a commercial bank, I'll tell you, they're not going to look at you with a business plan of half a million dollars to get into the farming industry. That's basically what it's going to cost to get into farming. That's a major problem. It certainly differs from what getting into farming would have been like in Newfoundland and Labrador in the seventies and the eighties.
On your first question, I think I sort of addressed it when Mr. Easter asked about some of the outreach programs. I certainly believe that it starts at the elementary or primary school level. You have to educate young people about where their food comes from. That can happen through a number of different measures and certainly by exposing young people to agriculture and having classroom initiatives on agriculture. That is very important. Young people in Newfoundland and Labrador today have really no understanding of where their food comes from. That's a generic issue right across the country.
I've been in Australia and New Zealand as well, and they have a lot of the same challenges down there, but they have certainly come up with a lot of good programs to help young farmers get into the industry. New Zealand could be a real model, even for Newfoundland and Labrador. They have quite an extensive primary agriculture industry, but they also have a very developed secondary processing industry. I believe that's very important as well.