Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to our witnesses.
I'm from Ontario, and I've had a number of great meetings with commodity organizations. We don't grow many lentils or peas right where I am, but that being said, we do grow a lot of corn, soybeans, wheat, and edible beans.
I'll go to Mr. Schmitz. I'll ask you for help, because I think we all need it in terms of how we communicate. I think there are two issues. It was mentioned earlier today that we sometimes have a fear factor that goes out, and we'll make the worst scenario so that we get a bad push. I don't agree with that scenario. I think we have to be balanced. We have to have science. That's what our basis is. As far as marketing goes, give farmers credit: quite honestly, they're not going to grow something they can't market. They aren't going to grow something if they don't have the research and development. That's actually what our grain farmers are saying about why a partnership developed. With Mr. Gold and Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Agblor, we've talked about developing these partnerships among universities, the growers, and the industry.
We're developing products, and we say we shouldn't be using these for commerce or to generate energy or whatever. The interesting part is that, based on the research one of my growers is showing me--and I'm a farmer also--at the end of the day, we will generate energy. We will generate a product for commercial industry. We may even generate products for pharmaceutical use. At the end of the day, we still have food, because now the research has been able to pull apart—let's use corn for example--in the energy development of ethanol.
Everyone has heard for a number of years--and somebody's always been putting it out--that GMO, genetically modified, is bad stuff. Nobody seems to understand genomics. That sounds a little softer. So how do we communicate, quite honestly, that not everything is right, and not everything is wrong? In the dairy industry, which I was in, in Canada, we did not accept BST. We have a sovereign right to do that, thank you.
How do we communicate those types of things to the people?
We do have a number of our younger families.... I don't read the labels, but my daughter does. Getting them to understand it is the other part.
How do we communicate that clearly? Could I have any ideas, please, from the three of you? Because it is an important aspect.