Evidence of meeting #31 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technologies.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Brendan Byrne  Chairman, Grain Farmers of Ontario
Raymond Orb  President, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities
Branden Leslie  Manager, Policy and Government Relations, Grain Growers of Canada
Serge Buy  Chief Executive Officer, Agri-Food Innovation Council
Tom L. Green  Senior Climate Policy Advisor, David Suzuki Foundation

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mr. Johns. Thanks to our witnesses as well.

We are out of time. We have about a minute.

Mr. Buy, I wanted to ask you one quick question, if I may take some prerogative as the chair. There was lots of discussion today from all of our different witnesses on what technology is available. I don't think there's an argument that there aren't some exciting things on the horizon, but a lot of questions were around scalability. I'd like to maybe get a quick answer from you on the difference, when we're talking about scalability, between a 200-acre farm and a 10,000-acre farm, from something the size of a house to a barn that houses 10,000 chicks in January.

When we're talking about scalability, what does that look like to you and how far away are we from that?

5:25 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Agri-Food Innovation Council

Serge Buy

We're really far away, and that's the problem. It's not only scalability from one small house to a large plant; it's also across Canada, having all those technologies across the country. That's also part of the issue. We're not there. In 10 years, we may be closer to being there, but we're certainly not there at the present time.

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow

Thank you to all the witnesses for their time.

I wish our committee members a belated happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a good break. We will see you on Wednesday.