The effect of climate change is mostly spoken of in terms of temperature, but when it comes to the forage industry, the effect of climate change will have effects on traditional rainfall patterns. How we deal with those changes is really interesting.
The Palliser Triangle of western Canada was considered to be of no agronomic value when it was first surveyed. We've proven that to be sometimes true, but not always true. A lot of that has been through innovative farming practices. There are a lot of good reasons to believe that we have the science and the brain power needed to adapt technologies from environments further south of us to our range land and forage lands, to keep them productive and maybe even enhance their productivity if there's an economic return on it.
One of the most important things I want to say today is that we have a marketplace in agriculture right now where almost everything we produce on the farm is going to turn a dollar--a profitable dollar--for that farmer. Every commodity now is at or near record high dollar values. Yes, input costs have gone up, but this is the time to bring forward innovative thinking and new ideas, because the farm now has potential to invest some of its new-found profits back into moving those ideas onto the farm and seeing those results. So this is a very important time not to break stride. We must move forward rapidly. This might only be a 10- or 15-year cycle, but we know that cycle is going to stay there for a long time. It is driven by high energy costs and a very strong population growth that now has money for food. We need to move now. We cannot break stride.