We shouldn't assume that the farm community across Canada is way behind the Stone Age. Every sector has gone through the same challenges. An acceptable style of business management had to increase, improve, and become more sophisticated. There are a number of farmers across Canada who are highly sophisticated in managing large operations that even many people in the non-farm sector would find amazing. The challenge is how you raise over time the entire cadre. It just takes time and effort.
The challenges Ted and my colleagues from the farm management community raised concerned personal preferences and comfort with an acceptable style, which take time to move. The sector has had incredible expansion in capacity. What I have found though--and this is a challenge to governments--is that over time, governments have disinvested in this. The same extension networks don't exist. The same university support doesn't exist. It's not that you need to subsidize it to the hilt, but is that outreach what it used to be?
In the United States, one of the major programs for manufacturers is based on the land grant colleges, which is what all extension agriculture in Canada was based on. This is one of the big supports in the United States for its manufacturing sector. It is the same general concept that we would use in extension agriculture for how to bring that whole skill set to the small- and medium-size players.