Sure. Thank you for the question.
The big thing to think about here is that farmers are price-takers, not price-makers, so input costs rise due to things such as additional taxes or whatever it may be. The carbon tax is a significant additional cost, especially if it's a year where you're trying to dry a lot of grain or it's a cold year. In Manitoba, we get to -40°C, so it's pretty cold here, and the summers get hot. You have to really make sure you keep a consistent temperature in your barns for animal welfare purposes.
The big thing is that those costs cannot be passed on to the consumer. The farmer has to eat them, and they're going to be paid for their product whatever the market is dictating. Sometimes they've already signed a contract for that price. They've locked in a price for part of their crop that year, so if they've locked in that price and the carbon tax goes up, for example, as it did—thankfully, it doesn't exist anymore—they have to eat that cost entirely.
It causes significant issues because the less money the producer has, the less money they are going to invest in their business. Also, farmers drive rural economies. When they have additional dollars in their pockets, they are going to invest in their communities whether by purchasing more products at the local seed dealer, buying new equipment or doing whatever it might be in the community. That's another downfall. Rural communities thrive when farmers are successful.