Obviously, research and investment constantly have an impact, as Tim mentioned. We don't see the herd increasing in numbers in Canada, but what we do see increasing is the weight per cattle. We're taking the research, exactly as he said, and we're looking at how we can increase production. How can we grow more using fewer resources?
As for the actual numbers and the impact, I'm sorry, but I don't have that. I can certainly provide those numbers for you.
The cattle industry has one of the biggest research clusters this year that has been received through the BCRC. I'm going to echo a little bit of what Tim said. I think it's a matter of how we leverage those dollars and how we pull together industry with government and farmers. We've been seeing a lot more farmer dollars getting invested into research than, perhaps, private company dollars.
I did want to question that we're seeing investment decreasing. I'm not sure that investment is actually decreasing. I think it's just getting spread out, and it's going into different areas. For typical investment in the past, you might have thought of production or you might have thought of genetics, but there's also investment going into technology such as micro-feeders so we can have the exact amount of nutrients that the cattle need and are able to monitor exactly their feed intake to increase weight gain. I think there is a lot that's going on that might not be considered typical research.