In the Organic Farming Institute, our courses are all developed so they are online. People all over Canada and internationally can take them. We have some students who have applied from other parts of the world.
The courses are pretty in-depth, with videos. We have a teacher available through email who marks everything. So far we've been putting things together on soil management so people can know how to manage the soil to produce healthy food. Now we've gone to the next step of producing ground crops. That course is going to teach people how to make a living off ground crops.
We have funding through SIBAC to take five acres of land and turn it into a profitable business planting garlic or tomatoes and selling directly, or that kind of thing. We're looking at developing courses in the next few years to help farmers make money. We're talking about ground crops, organic vintners, and greenhouse production year round. We want to start doing business planning.
For the institute it's all about getting young people into farming--or even old people who want to retire at 50 and become farmers, which happens a lot. That's how they spend their retirement.
I think the second question was on our mentorship program and getting people into farming. I guess the biggest thing is land value and help. There isn't really anything out there for people--at least that we know of--to access that through the government. There is a career focus program where they will pay 50% of the wages, but it's really a mentorship program. It doesn't really involve any training per se.
We've gone the extra step and provided training on tractors, business, and marketing techniques through CSA, or community-supported agriculture, to sell through farmers' markets and deal with restaurants and distributors.
Help me out here.