Thank you. That's an excellent question. It is something we've looked at.
I'll say what we at OFA have looked at. I'm not quite sure of the specific study for the U.S.
There are ways that AgriStability could be amended, without requiring a major overhaul of the program, to recognize diversified farms. You are right to mention this as an issue. We have heard from our members on it. Ontario has some of the most diversified farm operations in the country. Ontario agriculture at the macro level has an extremely diversified split of livestock, crop production and specialized greenhouses. It is extremely diversified at the macro level, but even at the individual farm level, we have producers who have multiple commodities.
As you rightly mentioned, when you are in that situation, it can blunt the possibility of a payment from AgriStability compared with a more specialized farm. If you have 1,000 acres growing corn, it's much more likely, possibly, if the price of corn drops, to trigger a payment than if you have some crops, some livestock and some other different commodities that may offset each other.
We have looked at this and put forward a position in the past that the AgriStability program can be amended to recognize those diversified operations and to treat each commodity grown by an operation as eligible for its own separate payment, if you will, under the program. If you're growing three different commodities and one commodity would trigger a payment but the other two would not, you could still get a smaller payment when looking just at that specific commodity that would have triggered it, compared with the situation now where the other two might offset it and you're very unlikely to get a payment.
To sum that up, we have looked at this. There are ways we can amend the program, and we would very much like to see that idea pursued as we move to the next policy framework.