Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm honoured to be appearing in front of the standing committee. SARM President Marit sends his regrets due to other commitments. The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities is an umbrella association for all of Saskatchewan's 296 rural munici

Agriculture committee  Yes, I could address that. I guess it goes back to the company's cost of production. Some of the information we've been finding is in fact—and I know Mr. Qualman touched on it—mergers of some of these huge companies. Some of these companies have actually bought out their supplie

Agriculture committee  I'll try to answer it. I have the study here, and we did read the study. The study doesn't really indicate why that has happened. I guess you have to realize, if you're buying it from the same producer and it is a Canadian producer and they are shipping it down there, they ha

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  Yes, definitely.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I'll take a try at that. I think that program is working well on its own, and our producers were really benefiting from that. At the same time, we're saying we want to have a balance between our companies out of the United States and Canada. We don't want to deter companie

Agriculture committee  Since my light is on, I'll try to answer. I'd just like to touch on the biofuel question for a minute. Our organization was quite adamant right from the very beginning as far as Canada getting involved with producers in biofuel plants, and in particular in Saskatchewan it would

Agriculture committee  Are you talking about the total program or just the chemical...?

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry, I don't have that information with me. I was looking at it, but I haven't got it here. We could get the information to you if it would help.

Agriculture committee  Okay.

Agriculture committee  We represent all of rural Saskatchewan, basically, other than Saskatoon and Regina.

Agriculture committee  Is it the farmers you're talking about?

Agriculture committee  It is about 50,000 farmers.

Agriculture committee  I don't know whether it necessarily has a relationship to the population. Saskatchewan has pretty much half the agricultural land in Canada. I mentioned this before, and I don't know whether it really answers your question, but we are seeing more integration. Some of these comp

Agriculture committee  Are you talking about crop prices?