Yes, that's exactly what's happened. In fact, we had a researcher from Barenbrug out of Holland. It's the largest grass seed breeding company in the world. They focus mostly on turf grasses, but they are by far the world's leader in forage grasses. When they came to North America about 10 or 15 years ago with both seed production and research of varieties, they didn't come to Canada; they went to the central U.S., where they saw the market potential. They have a plant breeding program that is targeting the warmer climate of the U.S. If you think of everything below the snow belt, that is where they are thinking about.
What we know from our own experience is if you look at Manitoba, eastern Manitoba is in a funny zone. We can do things that you can't do in the rest of western Canada. I can grow varieties of alfalfa and grasses that you won't grow in Brandon, which is only a two-hour drive away.
We know from the experience in our community that these types of forages have tremendous potential. What we have to do now is apply our science and innovation to overcome what mother nature hasn't given us. So we need to go to the research community, to the plant breeding community, and encourage them to come to us with their tremendous level of knowledge and to partner with us to solve that problem.
If you could take that 30% of our land base that's in undeveloped pasture land and boost it by 50% of its carrying capacity, think of what that does for the livestock industry, which is 25% of our agriculture. Get a grip on where you're spending your dollar and where it ends up at your tax base. That's a tax base; you'll get those dollars back. If you can take the marginal farmer in western Canada and turn him into a non-marginal farmer who you can tax to death, like you can a dairy farmer, then let's do that. Let's take those marginal lands and make them into a profit centre.
That's what you need to look at. It's a profit centre that you're trying to create out of land that is currently not.