Thank you, Blake.
First, on addressing consumer education, I think the commercial idea is a great idea, but I think the more hands-on approach that we've been taking with 4-H, youth breed associations, fairs, and exhibitions, having people being able to be around animals and around the people who care for them, and having those people explain what they do from day to day is extremely important. That's been a really good experience for me. Every time I go to a cattle show we have tons of people, cousins from the city who come through, and we explain to them what you do with the cattle.
Another idea is a YouTube video. I produced one myself. At this young ranchers round table, we're also producing a video, which I think is a great way to reach out to our friends on the Internet. A lot of people in my age group are on Facebook, etc., and it has been a great way to reach out and just have them see us on our operations as we talk about what we do and what we do for our environment as well.
As for encouraging more youth in our industry and encouraging them to stay in our industry and understand our industry better so they can be successful, we have the concept of a young leaders development program, which CCA is supporting and is in the midst of developing. This program will enable mentorship programs both for professional development in careers related to agriculture, beef especially, and for industry leadership development as well in regard to having people who want to be part of our industry and part of our provincial cattle organizations, etc.
In turn, then, we'll be able to send highly capable representatives to events such as the National Cattlemen's Beef Association meetings, the Five Nations Beef Alliance Young Ranchers Round Table, and the International Livestock Congress. We can really get people engaged and interested in understanding what our issues are.
On your second question, which was about the differences between when my parents started up and where we are today, it definitely feels as if we're buying the farm twice. What I mean by this is that two areas are affecting us: financing the purchase of our assets and the taxation implications of buying land.
Our parents want to retire, and the only way they can afford to retire is for us to sell some of our land and pay for their retirement, but that's obviously not going to happen, because we want to grow our business, become more profitable, and be able to market our genetics worldwide. We're going to need more land and more cattle, so we're having to pay them for the land we're purchasing from them while trying to grow our operation. When cattle prices are as low as they are, our bull buyers aren't able to buy bulls or they're not able to buy bulls for the price we would like, so profitability just isn't there. At the end of the day, our industry has to be profitable for us to be in it.