Agriculture committee  I agree with you 100%: rotations. The farm has to have rotations to be able to cut those diseases. If you look at soybeans in Quebec, with the white mould, the acreages went up, and the white mould problems went up also. Aphids came in also. The more the acreage, the closer the r

Agriculture committee  That's what I'm saying. Where I am now, I'm growing early-season soybeans. Certainly the yields are still not there compared to farther down south, because the season is shorter. But what I'm also saying is that with our traditional crops, such as wheat and barley--I grow malting

Agriculture committee  I might go back to what I was talking about. My greatest fear is that in certain parts of the country the farmers won't be competitive. Look where I am. I'm in zone 3. I'm farther up north in Quebec. I won't have varieties. I won't be competitive with the rest of the province. I

Agriculture committee  One thing we'll say is that the farm has to be competitive, but it has to be able to make a profit. You also have to have varieties—be that GM or non-GM—with good yields and good resistance to diseases. To have those possibilities, you have to be able to make sure you have all th

Agriculture committee  I didn't talk about it in my presentation, but the population is going up in the world. We have to produce more. We have to have tools for the farmers to be able to produce more. We'll still have choice, but the farmer will have to produce much more. If you still want to have w

Agriculture committee  For the time being, producers have choices. For straw cereals, they have more than a few choices, because the companies are not really in it for the long term. However, producers have to be there for the long term and be sustainable and competitive. For example, if a producer's

Agriculture committee  I believe it's all right. I agree with them.

Agriculture committee  The FPCCQ has never come out against labelling, but we have to make sure that producers don't pay the costs. But that is what happens in most cases. That is something that should be made clear.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I believe there should be, because agriculture in Canada is very diversified. So I agree with you. Some farmers will be organic; some others will grow otherwise. I'll just answer one part about the low level, what I believe. We had a committee here in Quebec. Zero percent,

Agriculture committee  I could give you the example of canola, a crop that is currently very important in western Canada and Quebec. Would canola have been marketed if there had been no public research? Probably not. Researchers at Agriculture Canada were able to investigate further and come up with th

Agriculture committee  In fact, Normandin is now a substation of Sainte-Foy because of the cuts that were made there. It now has fewer researchers. I will give you an example. In Sainte-Foy, there is a researcher who is greatly admired. He is doing research on germ plasms. That researcher would have le

Agriculture committee  Also, by the way, I talked a lot about Quebec. I've got The Western Producer here from February 3. On page 11, the open forum, you have the dean of agriculture from the University of Alberta saying pretty much the same thing about the need for investment in research. Thank you

Agriculture committee  If you want to make it easier you could say the Quebec cash-crop growers. In French, it's the Fédération des producteurs de cultures commerciales du Québec. I'll do my presentation in French, since I'm a Quebecker. Good morning. My name is William Van Tassel and I am a farmer f

Agriculture committee  As he was just saying, as is the case for grain production, we pay a premium to our income stabilization insurance program. All farmers get 25% off for two years.

Agriculture committee  That's hard. I'm not sure I can answer that. There are certain sectors that do quite a bit of exportation. You have the hog sector, which exports 50%. As for the rest, the grain sector some years can export a little bit and other years imports a little bit, but it's pretty well s