Agriculture committee  Certainly. The aspartic acid program that was initiated here a few years back has hit a typical roadblock, and that is that it's competing with a petroleum-based product. As long as the petroleum-based products are hovering in the $100-per-barrel range, it is not practical to make aspartic or polyaspartic acid from sugar beet residue.

Agriculture committee  Yes, the aspartic acid project was put on by a different organization a few years back. It is very active in Taber, but it has stalled. The research funding we received, for which we were extremely grateful for, was for bio-glycol to convert sugar beets into glycol, which would be plastic for the food industry, for cosmetics, etc.

Agriculture committee  We reached a crossroads. I referred to the pre-commercialization roadblock. While the research works phenomenally well, we found enormous hurdles and hills to climb during that valley of death, so to speak, between getting from the lab bench and pilot plant stage we are at to commercialization.

Agriculture committee  How are you?

Agriculture committee  That's wonderful.

Agriculture committee  I believe that a five-year time span on these programs is more than adequate. We are in an ever-evolving global economy and things do change. One of the detriments of that program, though, is timeliness of project approval. If those things could be sped up then I think we would see a better and more significant use of that particular program and there would be far more value to it.

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon.

Agriculture committee  It's great to be back. I'd like to begin by thanking the committee members and chair for inviting me to speak to you about innovation and competitiveness in the Canadian agriculture sector on behalf of the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers. We're a smaller agricultural industry in Canada, representing about 250 producers who annually generate about $40 million in production value.