Agriculture committee  I would. I've said that already.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I would certainly agree with that.

Agriculture committee  We have been very fortunate in recent years that it hasn't been the problem that it was, say, back 8 or 10 years ago, when there was a constant battle with the U.S. in the potato sector. But honestly, in these last five years, we've taken the irritations off of them for several r

Agriculture committee  No. I was referring to the trend in our area right now. There are more farmers going to other crops, non-typical crops in our area, like grain corn, soybeans, and canola, and diversifying into those other crops instead of solely potatoes. That's what I meant by that. And it is a

Agriculture committee  Go ahead, Connie.

Agriculture committee  I'll say no. We have not done any costing of it. The intent there was to flatten out the curve so that you wouldn't see as much change and so many gyrations in the margin.

Agriculture committee  I would say—

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  I will start. That is exactly where we are in New Brunswick, coming out of four not great years out of five. With the situation we face this year, some farmers who will not survive because they can't afford to wait for the system that's probably going to come. I do think there ar

Agriculture committee  Maybe I would just say that the challenge with any a program is to have one that is common enough to suit many diversified sectors. The more you do that, the more complex it's going to be. There's a limit to how far you can make a one-size-fits-all program for everything. So it w

Agriculture committee  Yes, for sure. Again, with most crops, processing is a critical part of the market. You must have enough critical mass and volume to warrant a processing sector. Of course, in the potato industry we have been very fortunate to have that. For other crops, I know they're looking to

Agriculture committee  Yes, perhaps.... More diversity is better than less diversity. As I said, up until very recently, we were very dependent on one crop to make the business flow. That is changing and it's changing slowly. I think that's an improvement because any time we depend on one thing.... Aga

Agriculture committee  Yes, I think that's where you're going. You're going back to where you were with crop insurance with NISA pre-2003. Most farmers were quite happy with that, except that it was a triggering mechanism. Of course, there's also the reluctance of some farmers to trigger it. That's the

Agriculture committee  When you look at a program like AgriInsurance, any insurance program has to be actuarially sound. It has to be self-sustaining over time. Again, I realize that probably not all the options are within my scope. But if the problem is too low a coverage and too high a premium, the

Agriculture committee  It has improved in the last couple of years because of the improved commodity prices for the crops. That's one of the dilemmas we've had in the east over the last few years, when our major rotation crops were small grains. At $100 a tonne it's a necessary evil. You had to rotate