Thank you.
I was a farmer too. Our farm was not very big, but we were still thought of as farmers. That allowed us to sell our products at the market and at the house. We did not own thousands of acres, of course. The crops we grew were to feed people. So I fully understand how producers must be protected.
You are right to say that there are all kinds of producers. I have met people you might call weekend farmers. They had an interest in the area and wanted farms to be kept for farming, even though it was not a source of income for them. Our small agricultural producers have to be protected. They do not all have the means to buy up thousands of acres, especially in Quebec.
More and more, people are preferring local produce. They do not want fruit to be shipped from foreign sources thousands of kilometres away. If we can grow it ourselves, so much the better. The farms growing potatoes or apples are generally not the large ones. In the west, the situation is quite different. Quebec farms, for example, may not be as impressive as the ones in Alberta or Saskatchewan, but that is how we make our living at home.