Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity today to give you our view on the competitiveness of Canadian agriculture, specifically as it pertains to our industry. I know our presentation has been forwarded to you, so I will just make a very quick presentation and high

Agriculture committee  I'll tackle that one, Mark. What I'll do is put it in some context. Everybody is familiar with the G-8 meetings that took place. Subsequently, there was also a G-8 farmers conference that I attended, which was actually expanded to the G-14. Around the table were various countri

Agriculture committee  If we could get you to stop thinking that way, that would be step one. It's a fair question. The very short answer, because I know you have other questions to ask, would be--

Agriculture committee  I'll just do the very simple black-and-white answer. Our market is divided up into basically the traditional--the whole bird, as we term it--and what we call the further processors. Our growth has seen significant increases in the further processors. There's been demand for furth

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you as well as the other committee members for letting us express our views on the Growing Forward program under the competitiveness banner. As stated earlier, I'm Mark Davies, and I hale from the Annapolis Va

Agriculture committee  I echo a lot of Ron's sentiments. He stole some of my thunder with the examples of the Tim Hortons and obviously some of the restaurants that are opening in your area. I'm sure they're not for free. In our industry it's a little different from dairy. It's more provincially base

Agriculture committee  At this point, I would have a cautionary no. I think it's working fairly well. This has really become an issue, I would say, in the last ten years. Ron has touched on a lot of the issues. Inherent in supply management is a lot of regulation to adhere to when it comes to food sa

Agriculture committee  I may defer part of that--

Agriculture committee  Okay, well, then, no comment. I share some of the same issues. In fact we've had an issue in the past year because of some of the challenges we've had in our market over the last 24 months. Our market tends to follow alongside the economy because of a lot of the higher-value cut

Agriculture committee  You've hit the nail on the head as far as an input cost in most livestock, and in particular in poultry. One thing I will point out is that looking toward the future we don't see any real relief in sight. We see this as an increasing input. And without getting into a long, drawn

Agriculture committee  At TFC, a turkey is a turkey, to be quite upfront about it. Not to speak for any other jurisdiction, but Ontario has a comprehensive plan in place to deal with the market segment termed organic. That's a frustration even among different processors looking for “more of their share

Agriculture committee  Thanks very much for the question. It's interesting. I agree that we need new farmers and this influx of new blood. Quite honestly, within our industry there is quite a good influx of generational farmers. That's not really an issue. I think that's common across supply managemen

Agriculture committee  I'll just let Phil make a couple of comments, if he would.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question. The short answer would be not in any formal sense. It's not as if there's a course of business acumen to take and here's some.... It's more we could provide resources and some direction. Inherent in supply management--and Ron has touched o

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'll quickly introduce myself. My name, as stated, is Mark Davies and I'm the chair of Turkey Farmers of Canada. I have a farm in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia where I raise turkeys, and I've done so for 25 years. I'm also a second-gener