It was a really interested farmer from P.E.I. who went searching to Ontario, and he met up with a gentleman by the name of Dave Hendrick just outside your city there, Ottawa. At the same time, they were looking to expand.
Now those companies have come together, with PRO Seeds and another company, and they call it Sevita International. They have grown their acreage in P.E.I. from basically nothing five or six years ago to about 10,000 acres today, which is quite an acreage for the Maritimes.
We in the agricultural industry, as farm leaders, are always interested in the value-added aspect and looking for new markets, and the Japan one fitted really well. The downside is that because our growing conditions are different from Ontario's, we have some problems with growing the proper varieties. The Japanese market is much tougher to meet when you compare it with selling soybeans to the PEI Grain Elevators Corporation, in that they can't be dried at an excessive heat the way normal soybeans can. That's one of the challenges, as is the wet weather we quite often run into.
Therefore, we need research. Research is very important to the grain and oilseeds sector too, not only soybeans. We talked about wheat and about Dover Mills in Halifax. Because we quite often have wet summers, we have a problem with fusarium. That has been brought up to this committee before. It all comes back to research. We need new and better varieties, not only in the soybean industry but also in barley and wheat and whatnot.
I hope that answers your question.