Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for your questions. I drive by your farm quite often with my truck, actually, even though I'm from Alberta, since we go and pick up fertilizer in Saskatchewan. Anyway, it's nice to meet you. The storage issue is a very important question, I think, and I'm gl

Agriculture committee  I don't think there's any tracking. Our information comes from the discussions we have as colleagues. Of course, it's often a matter of pride that one farmer can tell another he bought his inputs cheaper because he bought at the right time, which is a sign that he was lucky enoug

Agriculture committee  Actually there are the odd places where that's existing. There are cooperatives that buy large quantities of inputs and then sell it to their members. However, within this concentration process, we recently saw that a lot of farmers went with the newly created entities. It shou

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I can only add this. What have we done by not being concerned about the concentration process?I think many of those issues we're discussing right now can simply be summarized by the dramatic concentration that has happened in the agri-business sector worldwide. And th

Agriculture committee  Yes, no question about it. Allow some time. Most of those entities realize this, and I think also the buyers and the consumers out there--in this case, the farmers--need to be made aware of it. They have to speak out about that issue more vehemently than they've done in the pas

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for that. Just briefly, it's a very sincere discussion we're having here. I'd specifically like to comment on the dollar. Our currency, and how quickly it rose to a level that we haven't seen before, has surprised a lot of people in the trade. What one can

Agriculture committee  On your specific question, the savings are significant. They can be 30%, 35%, and sometimes 40%.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  Yes. First I would like to point out that in many ways Mr. Mann's comments meet my perspective out there, because we operate on a similar ground floor. It's very important that we realize that when we're discussing this we're not engaging in some type of an artificial engagement

Agriculture committee  I really appreciate the question. As Bob Friesen and Mr. Mann pointed out earlier, it's very important that we realize it's a significant issue that the majority of farmers simply cannot afford to buy fertilizer. So that's one issue.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Richard, and thank you, Mr. Chair. A point to be made here on the issue of fertilizer and what may now need to change is of course that we might change how we buy fertilizer. I think the days of going to buy fertilizer at seeding time are coming to an end. The supply