Thank you, Katie.
My name is Gillian Flies. My husband and I own and operate The New Farm Centre, a regenerative organic vegetable and mixed livestock farm in Ontario, which we've also developed into a demonstration, research and education centre.
Over the past 20 years, we've built a successful diversified farm business supplying local and regional markets. On our farm, resilience means reducing dependence on expensive external inputs, building soil health and creating strong local economies and knowledge exchange networks.
In August 2023, we experienced three major storms in one month on our farm, including one rain event with over three inches in under 30 minutes, but because of our soil health and structure, the water soaked into our fields in under an hour, which allowed us to harvest our crops while neighbouring fields experienced severe damage or total loss. We're also less exposed to input price shocks because we rely far less on external inputs, including purchased fertilizers and pesticides.
Right now, when many farms are facing skyrocketing input costs and supply challenges, our production costs have remained relatively stable, but achieving this has taken us 20 years. We took on the risk of adopting new practices ourselves, often without adequate access to capital, technical support, research or risk management, which all would have accelerated the process.
The reality is that farmers no longer have 20 years to respond to today's uncertainties. We need fast and effective resilience measures now. That's why, at The New Farm, we have focused on mentoring, training and supporting farmers through The New Farm Centre, but we can't do it alone.
Thank you.