Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to see the committee today.
My name is Murad Al-Katib. I'm here as the chair of the agri-food strategy council and also as the CEO of AGT Foods, based out of Regina.
Today I'm going to bring you some comments with a very specific focus on the western Canadian cropping system. I want to start with an acknowledgement that Canada has been blessed with a very significant agricultural endowment, with some of the best and most productive agricultural land in the world, making Canada a world leader in agricultural production and export.
For decades we've been known as the breadbasket of the world; however, in recent years, we've increasingly been known as the first stop on the protein highway. With food, fuel, fertilizer and feed, Canada has what the world needs and wants, and Canadian agriculture is on the front line in providing societal solutions to global challenges in protein, food and renewable fuel supplies. We will be vital to the United Nation's FAO mission, which requires the world to produce the same amount of food in the next 40 years as it produced in the last 10,000 years of civilization to meet the growing population of 10 billion people by 2050.
The agriculture sector, with our farmers and farm families, processors and exporters, is up to this challenge. We employ sustainable solutions, such as a three-crop rotation of canola, nitrogen-fixing pulses and wheat, and technologies like zero- and minimum-tillage farm management. We succeed even in an environment of rising fuel prices, carbon policies that increase production and input costs, and other challenges that face our farm families and processors across this country.
To continue to succeed, though, we must address risks and uncertainties and future-proof our sector, including for stronger competition and changes in consumer demand for quality plant-based proteins, environmental stewardship and cleaner energy.
Labour availability is a major obstacle in agriculture, one I'm certain you'll have questions about. In a post-COVID environment there's been a dramatic effect on availability of workers at every level of our industry. Prospective workers have moved on to other positions with increased pay, better benefits and other advantages, while others have exited the workforce entirely.
While there are methods of dealing with labour shortages, such as technology, robotics and automation, labour will continue to be an ongoing challenge, especially as processors make investments in new infrastructure to add capacity to meet the growing consumer demands.
With projects like AGT's planned protein extraction facility in Regina, as well as a $360-million canola crushing facility in partnership with Federated Co-operatives, announced last month to produce one billion litres of renewable diesel, which is part of the $2-billion integrated agricultural complex project, the availability of ready, trained and available workforce is of utmost concern.
In the agriculture sector, we have always wrestled with transportation-related issues, especially with our cold climate and market-locked nature. Recently, funding options such as the national trade corridor fund replenishment in our budget are very welcome announcements. Strong leadership is always needed, though, to create transportation policy frameworks to support trade and continue to provide long-term funding to build capacity, invest in infrastructure, remove bottlenecks and make supply chain improvements that are critical to maintaining Canada's reputation as a reliable supplier of products.
You may know that I was on the federally appointed panel in charge of reviewing the Canada Transportation Act, the Emerson report, which paid special attention to recommendations to the agriculture industry. I was also honoured to chair the Industry Strategy Council's agriculture subcommittee with Monique Leroux. We tabled our report in 2020.
Key to that work was rekindling recommendations about long-term infrastructure planning. How can we develop a multimodal strategy in our country if we're planning in election cycles of two to four years versus 10, 20 and 50 years? We need to ensure that the economic prosperity of Canadians and the maintenance of our social programs and our way of life are really tied to economic prosperity. Trade infrastructure is very key to that.
In our report from the ag strategy table, we provided a number of key recommendations for the ag sector, many of which provide the basis for our discussions with you today at this committee meeting. These included five key areas to strengthen the agri-food sector to collectively embrace the future- proofing of our agriculture and agri-food sector by renewing our regulatory system to become more agile and embracing digital innovation to provide safe, traceable, sustainable food, feed and ingredients. Through this work, we can only lay the groundwork for agriculture 2.0. It is a generational opportunity that has never been more exciting for our economy.
I'll be happy to take questions from the committee on the supply chain challenges, transportation, labour and skills.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.