I'm not quite sure how we write policy on that, to be truthful. Nonetheless, we may start suggesting that one ought to check out folks in rural communities and perhaps should do those sorts of things.
I hate to tell you, Kerry, but I come from Niagara, which is wine country. We could have picked ice wine grapes about five times this winter, it has been that cold. In fact, we're looking at about a 30% loss, probably, in the tender fruit crop when it comes to the vines and the trees.
Mr. Allison is in an adjacent riding to mine, just up the way, and it has been bitterly cold. It has been -20°C for a long time. In fact, it was interesting—I don't know if Mr. Allison saw it—we actually had one day since January that got close to 0°C. It was actually -0.6°C. That's as good as it got to 0°C, which is unusual in Niagara. Farmers down there will be adding those up.
There's an interesting statistic on your sheet. I want to thank you for the copy of your “Family Farm 2.0 – Preparing for 2050”. Like a few of us around here, when you start talking about “2.0”, I'm not quite sure what you really mean. The interesting stat you have in here—it's a cautionary tale as well, as we have to start thinking about how we do different things to get folks into farming—is the fact that 8.2% of farmers are 35 years of age or younger. That's not a good demographic, to be honest, in the sense that the number is low.
Notwithstanding Mr. Dreeshen's comment that farmers sometimes want to stay on for a long time, the issue is that they may want to hang around—Mr. Dreeshen's probably right—and some of us may actually use equipment we shouldn't be using anymore. In my case it's usually the chainsaw. The issue is that the replacement demographic needs to be higher than that. I think that becomes abundantly clear. Granted, farms are changing and evolving. Some are larger and some are smaller. Organic farmers are small, and can be full time and profitable depending on where they are, and they can be smaller. It's moving all the time.
Let me ask a question, and anyone should feel free to pick up on it. It's in regard to technology, whether that be the smartphone, the use of the Internet, the sharing of information, or those lovely little drones that I notice you have a picture of in your magazine. Where do you see it going? Has it worked for you? Is it overhyped? Is it under-hyped? Where do you see this going, and how effective is that for you? Some of it's not cheap. Some of it is. I'd love to hear some of the feedback around what you see in technology and where we're headed.