Agriculture committee  To follow up on that, Humphrey described it very well; but on top of laying off your futures risk and your currency risk, it also lays off your basis risk, which is one risk component, and it is very difficult to find a tool to do that. That's why there is so much interest in thi

Agriculture committee  Clearly there would be a need for regional indexes to be established where price correlations don't track. You're absolutely right. In Atlantic Canada they would likely need their own regional index, as Alberta has theirs today.

Agriculture committee  I guess my response to that would be that this in fact does happen, certainly in very specific situations, but we do have a lot of expertise in agriculture, and certainly in the cattle industry in Canada. There are some who consult internationally and do quite well at it. We also

Agriculture committee  That's a great question. There's some confusion out there among farmers as this program has been discussed, as well. The cattle price insurance, which is certainly the one I was referring to, is an insurance program where producers can basically, for a premium, lock in a price ba

Agriculture committee  True.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Ryder can maybe assist with that. I believe the top tier is up to 95%.

Agriculture committee  That's true, and that's a fundamental distinction.

Agriculture committee  I fully agree with that statement.

Agriculture committee  If I've understood the question correctly, you are asking if the increased trade and dependency on other global markets also poses an increased risk to our BRM programming.

Agriculture committee  I would suggest that as we receive more access to foreign markets and high-value markets around the world, our dependency on BRM programming is going to decrease. Certainly the cattle industry is an example of that, as we're now entering a phase of increased market access opportu

Agriculture committee  That isn't that uncommon. My response to that would be, “Well, we're not grain farmers.” Crop insurance and hail insurance are offered. And if you live in a region—

Agriculture committee  Sure. But again, I'm a firm believer that producers need to bear their normal business risk. There's a pretty good tool out there in hail insurance. If they're in a region where hail is a reasonable probability, I would call that an input cost to consider.

Agriculture committee  Sure. Again, in our industry, we've had these discussions. I'm convinced that when we get our competitiveness issues corrected—and we're going some distance to getting that done—we will see some profitability in the industry. That's ultimately what it's going to take for reinvest