Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for inviting me. I do have a presentation, copies of which will be circulated later. I didn't have time to have it translated. We look at competitiveness from a business school perspective. I also farmed for 20 years, so I also look at it from that perspect

Agriculture committee  First of all, there's a national food policy, but there's also a national food strategy. To me, the food strategy is the industry strategy for how we're going to be successful in the future, and the policy is the Growing Forward framework that actually can support that.

Agriculture committee  In regard to the strategy, there are a number of initiatives. The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute has one; the Federation of Agriculture has one: and now the Conference Board of Canada is starting into this space. The common themes you see in a national food strategy are that

Agriculture committee  There has to be one strategy.

Agriculture committee  Yes. I think the government can play a facilitating role in doing that, in helping bring those players together and in also helping to have a discussion around what the relationship is between the strategy and the Growing Forward framework, and which pieces would really support

Agriculture committee  It's actually before interest and depreciation that the small farmers are losing money, and this is as a class. On average they tend to lose money year after year after year. If you look at aggregate farm income statistics, you will see that on average Canadian farmers lose mon

Agriculture committee  Well it's net income, but it's actually before interest and depreciation, so net income would be even less.

Agriculture committee  Okay, thanks. It's not to comment on this one, but actually on the GMO question. There are two ways you can test for GMOs. You can test for the DNA or you can test for the protein that the DNA actually produces. I just want to comment on banning or labelling. Part of the reason

Agriculture committee  Land costs have gone up quite a bit over the last few years and land just continues to increase. Now, in our area it's not nearly like that; it's more in the $10,000-to-$13,000 range. But still, if you put together a 200-acre parcel, that's a pretty significant chunk. On top of

Agriculture committee  No. Actually, what you're starting to see, and you're seeing this out west particularly, is venture capital firms starting to say, “If you need 4,000 acres and you have 1,000, we'll buy the other 3,000 and lease it back to you”. There's a company in—

Agriculture committee  I'd say it's a reaction to the reality of the situation. If you need $5 million to get into business, you probably aren't going to have it if you're 26, 28 years old. People in other businesses lease factories, lease equipment. In agriculture we've always had the view that you ne

Agriculture committee  Okay, very briefly. I'll do two levels. On food processing, I think that programs to help people invest in new technology and new methods like lean manufacturing and so on are very important. At the farm level, I have two things to say: Productivity is inputs over outputs, or o

Agriculture committee  What is obvious to me is that small farms need different kinds of things from larger farms, so they need help accessing markets. That can be help with setting up networks, and also help with understanding how consumers are shifting, becoming more multinational, and so on. There

Agriculture committee  Very much so. The agriculture and food sectors lag behind everybody else when it comes to using information technology. The fight against traceability to me is ridiculous. It helps identify your product as organic or local, which gives you a brand advantage. It also gives you goo

Agriculture committee  That's a really interesting comment because the crop insurance program works well; it's responsive, it's fairly fast, and it's well understood. Producers are generally happy with that particular program. The AgriInvest program, again, is very easy to understand because you get a