Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through you to our panel.
Mr. Carlson, you mentioned that you are flexible and serve the unique needs of farmers. You may have heard that in eastern Ontario they are reportedly experiencing the worst drought in 50 years. The corn is just a few feet high, but it has tassels, and where there are cobs there's no silk, so pollination is not going to occur. Furthermore, the nitrates apparently are so high that if they feed the silage to the cattle, they'll die. So we have that situation, and then there's the barley, where the pods are so dry that you just have to rub it between your fingers and it turns to dust. With alfalfa, the plants are too short to cut, and the taproots may be lost, so replanting must occur.
With this, the challenge for the cash croppers and the people who grow the grain for the purpose of feeding their livestock is that they just don't have anything. With hay they got one cut. Those who have to buy hay can't find it. They've looked over 300 kilometres, and it just doesn't exist. They're already feeding what hay they do have because the grass has all dried up.
The question they're facing is whether or not they can or should plant something that could be harvested this fall so they've got something to feed their cattle. They have to wait for the crop insurance payment, of course, and what they need to know is whether or not they have the capacity to plant, because they don't have access to the cash for several months when the crop insurance eventually pays out.
So my question to Farm Credit Canada is would Farm Credit Canada use the pending crop insurance claim as collateral to lend money to these farmers who have to plant?