Thank you. It would be interesting for the members of the committee to try to picture the future. We have to go back to the foundation of agriculture, which is to feed the community. If we have a surplus, it is easy to sell abroad. But right now, we are selling what we have too much of, the five million hogs in Quebec, for example, and we are buying what we could grow locally, such as garlic, cucumber, cabbage, tomatoes, and so on.
We have somewhat changed the balance of agriculture. Access to inexpensive oil has completely turned things around. Between 1950 and 1960, we started importing and exporting pretty much shamelessly. Today, we are assuming the responsibility, as producers, to feed the planet while our communities are starving to death. So we need to go back to the origins, to the basic principle of agriculture, which is to feed the community first.
We have to feed our communities first. Farmers' markets—both in Quebec and in Canada, I am sure—work because there is a direct contact with producers. We need to rediscover those ties. Regardless of what we can accomplish, there is definitely an export market, but this market does not have a lot of ties with producers and the community. For example, an entire production might be exported. The community would have no link to that production.
So we need to go back to basics. To do so, there are two potential markets: the export market—which has to continue because it has been around for almost 50 years—and the other market that we are in the process of rediscovering. With public markets for regional solidarity and online markets, we are rediscovering the ties with producers.