It was a lengthy process of reflection. I've been an agronomist in this area for 20 years. My analysis is horizontal, but we have observed an increase in the amount of fallow land. Also, with regard to farmers, it has to be said that they are 50 years old on average, that there are no new farmers and that they have abandoned stock production, both dairy and cattle. So they find themselves with land, and grain and hay production are profitable over small land areas. To give you an order of magnitude, the largest operations—there are a few—are 600 acres. That's very small for an operation; there's a lack of profitability, a lack of new farmers. People are slowly abandoning this activity and letting the time go by until they retire.
The cultivation of energy plants can be done on lands that these people leave abandoned. This cultivation is quite similar to that of grain; so there has to be a slight knowledge transfer. They can use the equipment that are on the farms, they can plant with that equipment, they can harvest; so that doesn't require a lot of investment. What people are looking for is a crop that will enable them to earn a better income, that requires few inputs, little labour, because there is no farm labour. That's the benefit and the interest they see in it. These are small local areas where there are one or two farmers per village, and when one disappears, it's like losing 100 businesses in a medium-size or large city.
This has a big impact for us. We're talking about the survival of schools, the post office, basic institutions in a village—which will vitalize it. When we talk about revitalizing a rural area, the idea is to put those areas back into cultivation, which will create employment. People will cultivate, buy and stay there. Those people who are at the end of their careers, after giving up dairy production, nevertheless have a lot of experience behind them. They want to use it to move toward a crop that can make things interesting for new farmers, make it possible to establish a new generation of farmers at an affordable price. These are elements that increase interest in agricultural producers. As for maple producers, I'll leave it to Ms. Patoine to answer.