Agriculture committee  I would agree with the two previous comments. I also wanted to comment on your previous question, when you asked where that money is going. The grocers are placing more demands on the packers: they have to be “cold chain” approved. You have to have your apples shipped at whatev

Agriculture committee  I believe it's western Canada and then western U.S., and a small portion is exported overseas.

Agriculture committee  It's not so much that you're selling overseas or you're exporting. It's that the price is set in Washington state, because they're producing 100 million boxes and we're producing 2 million boxes. Washington state sets the price. A favourable exchange rate at $20 a box is actually

Agriculture committee  We're part of the Okanagan Tree Fruit Cooperative. It's a packing house owned by growers. All of us sign contracts to ship our fruit to them and ship all of our fruit to them. So they do the storage and grading, and B.C. Tree Fruits then does the selling of that fruit. That's why

Agriculture committee  I think there is also room to expand the program to other pests, such as a new one called the spotted wing drosophila. It is a vinegar fly that lays its eggs in ripe fruit, which is different from other flies that lay their eggs in rotting fruit. That affects soft fruits, so blue

Agriculture committee  That just guarantees your loan. It doesn't say anything to the terms of the loan or the interest or provide you with a market to sell your product. I'm sure it might be helpful in some cases, but it's also not accessible to a larger farm. I'm not sure what the statistics are on w

Agriculture committee  My concern is that there has to be something for quality. You don't want just anything to make that; you still need some incentives to grow a quality product. So I think those would have to be in place for that type of floor pricing.

Agriculture committee  We need these programs as a backup, but we also need to get our profitability back. That goes to what Dave was speaking about before. If we restrict imports to at least the standards under which we're producing our own fruit, then at least we won't get the dumping and the below-c

Agriculture committee  I see your point, but if we can't afford to buy it anyway, then maybe someone else should buy the house and rent it to us.

Agriculture committee  I'm not familiar with the previous program so I can't compare, but this program is meant to equalize fluctuations in the market. When you have ups and downs it helps keep your income stable so you can count on it. In our industry we have diminishing returns. It's an average ove

Agriculture committee  I think that's how farmers retire. They sell a lot off, and then they don't have as much to do. They can then farm on not such a full-time basis, and they have some more money coming in. That's how that's been regulated. With the agricultural land reserve it is stipulated that it

Agriculture committee  Definitely. I think so. We developed some new graphics with B.C. Tree Fruits. They're our brokerage. They do the marketing and the selling, and they did some stand-alone... They're essentially four boxes high--the height of the table--but all sides, to the ground, are covered i

Agriculture committee  Thank you for having me here today. My name is Madeleine Van Roechoudt. I'm a third-generation apple grower from Winfield, which is half an hour north of here. I completed my degree in agriculture at the University of British Columbia, and am about to start an online MBA through