Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely.

Agriculture committee  Sorry, can you repeat...?

Agriculture committee  The way I would answer that is, yes, farmers need to.... Working together is how they're strongest. They're dealing with very powerful entities. It's fundamentally a question of market imbalance. That's what I think is a problem. That relates to the young farmer problem. There's

Agriculture committee  Canadian farmers are phenomenal business people. They're also phenomenal stewards of the land, and they also know a lot about raising animals and crops and whatnot. Some of our members have found success in actually inviting urban people out to their farms to witness the farming

Agriculture committee  That's part of the point I've been making. I don't know how it's sustainable in the long run. There could be a point where taxpayers decide they just don't want to shovel out that kind of money. I would also argue that it's a system that's propping up an unsustainable system. W

Agriculture committee  I think that's an excellent question, and it is actually a fundamental question of agriculture right now. Certainly getting young farmers into the industry is going to be very important going forward. This is where we would again see the need for BRM to focus on other things, suc

Agriculture committee  We have members involved in the people's food policy project, and we very strongly believe that local control over food and a food policy that puts people first and really connects farmers with eaters is really important. I think that would solve a lot of the problem. One of the

Agriculture committee  We have a policy issue right now that's under way. For us, it is a mistake to try to eliminate an institution where farmers act collectively to give them market power in an industry that is dominated by very few players. For us, the answer would be institutions that allow farmers

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Why is farm income so low? Why are we spending $3.5 billion on BRM if everyone is doing so well?

Agriculture committee  It's our view that we're dealing with a marketplace that has very powerful interests operating on either side of any farmer. We don't see this idea of acting individually, or farmers trying to eliminate or compete with each other. That's what this is about. It's about farmers ac

Agriculture committee  You were talking about whether there is any hope with weather-related issues and whatnot. What I would say is that we're seeing record returns in the marketplace. There's lots of value being produced in the marketplace. It's not about weather, but about being able to extract enou

Agriculture committee  Hello. My name is Kevin Wipf. I'm the executive director of the National Farmers Union, and we surely welcome this opportunity to come here today and present to you. The NFU is a direct membership, nation-wide organization made up of farm families. It was founded in 1969, and c