Thank you, Chair.
The theme of my question is going to be international collaboration.
During the course of this study, we heard reference to countries like Australia that are engaged in a national soil strategy. One of our witnesses, Mr. Eric Toensmeier, was talking about France, which in the next couple of decades has a national commitment to convert 1.5 million acres of cropland to agroforestry.
Our committee is aware that this year in Glasgow there is going to be the world congress of soil science, where several thousand of the world's top soil scientists are going to come together, and I'm sure soil health and how we can best combat climate change are going to be major themes.
From AAFC's perspective, could you inform the committee on what your collaboration with international partners is like? Are there any countries in particular that your department looks to as places that some of this cutting-edge research is being developed? Can we take advantage of that open-source knowledge to best inform our practices and policies here in Canada?