As I underlined before, I believe that Canadians want to buy local. As you mentioned, there is a lot of concern among artisan cheese-makers that they'll have too much competition from imported European cheeses. Rather than focusing our attention on being able to export into the European market, I think it's more valuable for small Canadian artisan cheese-makers to have support from the infrastructure of local government and the Canadian system to help them continue on.
Our farm is a licensed producer of milk, and that has to go through the supply-managed system, which is fine. I'm a processor. We have two companies on our farm. My husband is the farmer, and I'm the cheese-maker. So we do both. We work together, but it's the processor who's selling the milk. So if we understand that the processor—whether it's the small artisan cheese-maker or a larger processor—is the one actually putting the product in front of the consumer, then if there's support for the processor as well as increased awareness of the value of agri-tourism for those who are interested in going out to the farms to actually explore what the Canadian farmers are doing, I think there would be increased support for Canadian farms. Even the small producers have to jump through the same hoops as the big ones. We have to have the same level of sanitation, the small level of food safety, the same hazard plans. We have to have sampling and testing of our products in the lab just as the big ones do, but we don't have the margins that the larger ones have.
We in our little town of Agassiz pioneered the circle farm tour program that has now spread across the Fraser Valley. It's extremely valuable. It brings people out to the farm. So our direct sales to consumers are very valuable.