Thank you.
Yes, that's a very good point with respect to investment.
In the last couple of years—maybe three years since the onset of the pandemic—the average small operator has had to invest unplanned capital into their operations to deal with everything COVID- related, from PPE to infrastructure changes, to health and safety measures, to education, to support for their employees. Those were all unplanned and came as a trade-off versus being able to modernize their plant and equipment through either automation or various other investments that would make them more efficient within the plant walls, or to produce a safer product, or, like you say, to replace some aspect of the manual labour that exists on the floor.
Those come at an expense. It would be a very welcome indication from the government that you'd be willing to invest and help our sector, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, with the type of investment that has been foregone in the last couple of years through all of the raises that we've seen in the prices of inputs, as well as in COVID-19 management. Your willingness to invest in the innovation and automation of our plants would create an immediate effect and a very strong return for our domestic food supply.