Agriculture committee  Exactly. So we're working on this with companies to make sure that we can save 15% to 20% of fertilizer on a field and increase the yield. There's plenty going on in innovation.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. It was part of the bit that I skipped to get to the finish line, which was about the mesoscale, bringing stuff to the mesoscale so that it can go to the megascale, so to speak. Here are two examples. We did projects with a greenhouse grower of hydroponic spinach, one of the only ones in North America growing spinach hydroponically, who needed a solution to harvest the spinach in a way that wouldn't hurt the plant itself, to make sure that it can keep growing.

Agriculture committee  I'll let Nigel handle this one.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I appreciate the question. I agree with Mr. Third that often, to move at the speed of business it's a question of having faster turnaround time on funding requests. As for our view on the five-year aspect, agricultural research has typically a longer timeframe than other types of research.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I'm glad we have another four minutes. At the Canadian Food and Wine Institute, we do a lot of projects and develop a lot of products. The main thing that seems to be a challenge for small companies trying to put some new products on the shelves is the actual mesoscale development.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today along with Nigel Corish, who's our research project manager in the food and beverage innovation sector. At Niagara College we do applied research on many different subjects. The idea for us is to take our faculty infrastructure, students, and equipment and bring them to bear on the challenges and the desires of industry, SMEs mostly.

Agriculture committee  Sure. I guess I was saying that we do technology projects, including product development and all that, but also commercialization projects. When a company comes to us and asks, “Could you please develop a new product? We think it's going to be popular on the market”, we also ask them, “What is your market?