Thank you, Mr. Chair, and it's good to be back on your committee here.
As a farmer for 20 years, growing vegetables in Cape Breton, you learn a lot about the challenges, whether it's the marketplace or the growing conditions. I remember being on this committee before, and every farmer is different, every commodity is different, and how they make their money is different. We've seen operations where they're doing alternative energy, there is tourism in farming, and it's very complex. There is no single one that is a model, but at the end of the day it's an expensive business and it's a risky business.
I have two questions. One is on the co-operatives. Our farm, even as we got larger, still relied on co-operatives to buy our products. We had our own co-operative farm store, and we also sold to a co-operative, and it was very good. The people we sold to appreciated that constant supply. My first question is around how the federal government can help foster these co-operatives, especially when you're starting out and you can't afford all the equipment.
The second part is on access to land. We used to have to rent a lot of our land, and what frustrated me was that there were people who had good farmland but who weren't farmers, and they weren't letting anybody farm it. I know this is probably more on a municipal level, but should there be some way we can encourage these municipalities, so that this farmland is not taxed as farmland if they're not using it for farming?
Those are the two questions I have. How can we, as the federal government, help foster those co-operatives? They not only help farmers starting out, but also keep their debt load down.
The second is all about land usage and how we can get good agricultural land in production, whether it's federally or more on a municipal level. I'm asking anyone who wants to answer those questions.