As many of you may be aware, we operate under a supply-managed quota system, and with the precipitous decline in the legal demand for our product, we have a quota-holding membership of 1,559 individuals. Currently the legal demand for the product would support only roughly 200 medium to large-sized farms, so there is a massive over-infrastructure in our sector.
We were successful in 2005 in getting government support for a partial quota buyout. It was under the TAAP program of 2005. We've been asking the government since that time to continue with that process to help farmers exit tobacco production.
When we suggest that the only solution is an exit plan, that's from the farmer's perspective. We have too many people, and there's not enough legal activity to support us all. Many of our farmers need to leave, and they need an economically viable way to leave. Having all this excess infrastructure only provides for, I would say, the lure of another form of contraband, which is the off-farm sales. We do not deny it exists. We know it does. We don't really have the resources ourselves to stop it from happening, but a managed exiting of the excess infrastructure would do a lot to eliminate that potential source of leakage.