Agriculture committee  I would say, again, if I had to pick one thing, it would be looking at alternative models for land tenure and affordability of land, such as community land trust.

Agriculture committee  But if that program could buy out a farmer and let that farmer live on the land...

Agriculture committee  I tried to access that program, but wasn't able to for the reason I said earlier, that I didn't own the land, that I had a lease on the land instead.

Agriculture committee  May I make a comment in response to that?

Agriculture committee  I think we need to look at a totally different system that takes agricultural land out of the speculative property market. That way we could purchase land from older farmers and make it accessible to younger farmers, moving it through a charitable organization such as a community

Agriculture committee  In whatever that would be, I think the committee or the government would need to be mindful of the different scale of farming in different regions so that these would be targeted to smaller-scale farmers.

Agriculture committee  And having provincial and federal support for agricultural marketing co-ops would give buying power to farmers without gouging the profits.

Agriculture committee  I would also say, in terms of access to financing, a lot of the programs that I've come across do require higher initial capital and equity to put into the loan and are definitely geared for larger-scale farmers. You know, a $20,000 loan to me would actually make quite a big diff

Agriculture committee  I'd just like to add one thing to that. I agree with what Patricia was saying. There was one thing I found particularly hard in accessing financing. I didn't have to come up with a mortgage for the land, but I did have to come up with capital for infrastructure and start-up expe

Agriculture committee  I just wanted to address the issue of land, quickly. I know that's an issue in speaking with young farmers across the country. The land bank system of tenure... I can see that a problem in looking at that would be that it would be a constant draw on federal funds to pay the diffe

Agriculture committee  My name is Cammie Harbottle. I'm 28 years old, and I grew up in a small town in rural B.C. Clearly, agriculture is in a crisis, and I'm certain that many of the stories you'll be hearing or have been hearing across the country are about that crisis. But my story is about solution