One of those barriers to entry that affected us personally was in the area of succession planning. Farming requires an incredible amount of capital investment, certainly more than most young people can afford. This has been even more daunting over the past three years, as profitability has been high in grain farming, increasing the net worth of our parents substantially. This is of course a good thing for our parents, but for us it made transferring ownership more challenging.
Now, with commodity prices decreasing due to normal or below normal levels, profit margins have once again collapsed. We now have to come up with more capital from even lower margins to compensate. Tax incentives and increased capital gains exemptions have a direct impact and provide immediate relief to young producers and their predecessors.
We have participated in the farm programs CFIP and CAIS. Unfortunately, we faced the same problem over and over: the calculations did not adjust for expansion properly. Every year since we started farming we have expanded our acres. The farm programs took a five-year average and didn't reflect those expansions.
We have chosen to participate in the AgriInvest program because of its flexibility and because it allows us to choose when the rainy day fund is needed, rather than having it triggered by someone else's calculations. We have chosen not to participate in AgriStability because of the administration required and because it does not work for our farm structure.
As a part of our own risk management strategy and succession plan to retire my parents and welcome my brother home to farm with us, we are experimenting with a new model of farming. We are now farming 12,000 acres as part of an integrated value chain called Wigmore Farms. The company has four divisions. There's farm management: in total, Wigmore farms over 40,000 acres in three areas of Saskatchewan. It has a crop production division: Wigmore owns and operates six retail facilities and supplies fuel, fertilizer, and chemicals. In its processing division Wigmore has processing facilities for chickpeas, lentils, and canary seed, and has capacity for over 100,000 metric tonnes. The export division of Wigmore exports chickpeas, lentils, and canary seed to more than 25 different countries.
Joining up with an integrated company has given us perspective within many areas of the agriculture industry, and it has allowed us to see our commodity move throughout the value chain. We have direct access to consumers, which is becoming increasingly important for food safety and to our end-use buyers. Having a company like Wigmore, which purchases millions of dollars of input costs every year, has given us the opportunity to advance our succession plan, give my parents much deserved income to enjoy their retirement, and have more time for us to focus on the decisions we need to make to grow more quantity and quality of crops.
We hope that for the next generation of young people, including our four-year-old daughter Claire and 18-month-old Addison, we have new and unique opportunities within our own company if they choose agriculture as their career. Coming home to the family farm has taken on a whole new meaning.
We'd also like to emphasize the need for proper messaging around agriculture and how important the industry is to Canada's economic position. We see a role for government to play in advocating a positive image for Canadian producers. Much of the media attention our industry receives is focused on handouts and crisis management, as politicians trip over themselves trying to be seen as saving the noble farmer. As Cherilyn mentioned, we need less interference in the marketplace. Please don't get caught up in how the urban public might perceive your policy positions. Farmers need government to let them run their businesses as they see fit.
To attract young people to this business we need policies that respect the entrepreneur, policies that promote a positive image--