The easiest way to explain that, Mr. Lemieux, would be: build it and they will come. Canada is well recognized around the world in emerging markets, as well as some of our primary markets like the U.S., for the safety and sustainability of our farm products.
We also have a great story to tell when it comes to our environmental footprint. I know in my own farming experiences, with the land that I've farmed with my brother and that my nephew is now farming—it's the same land, the same acreage—he's now pulling in at least a 40% gain, if not double the crop production, that we were 10 to 20 years ago simply by a lot of assessment work done on the ground as to what trace elements are required. Now it's a lot more finesse in seeding.
Crop rotations are a big part of that, but making sure that the copper, the sulphur, the manganese, the trace elements are addressed. I mean, we used to look at 35 bushels an acre of canola as a really good crop. He's now in that 55 to 60 bushel range, doing exactly the same things with those trace elements, the timing of crop rotations, and so on. That's what a lot of the innovation is about. We don't have extra land, but we certainly have the ability to gain more from that land and still continue with that lighter environmental footprint.
We know we're able to produce it and we know there's a hungry market out there. As I've said, China is growing by the population of Canada every year in the middle class. As I often say, if everyone in the middle class in China had a bacon cheeseburger and a beer once a month, we couldn't supply it as a country. That's the size and scope of what's going to be required.
Our latest venture to China....a brand new group out of Toronto has connected the dots with distributors in China, another billion dollars' worth of canola. That's half of our market access into China is canola oils, so this adds to the success of those type of ventures.
To make that all happen we've embedded agricultural people, CFIA people, in emerging markets like China, around the world. We've just added another number of trade centres in China to get us further out from the Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou triangle. It's all very important work and it's paying dividends.