Agriculture committee  That's certainly true if you're talking about gross margins, which are down in the processing business. I say that because it's been mentioned here, but it's not something we addressed in the report. That said, if you look at the fact that retail margins have gone up, you also see that some profit margins are going in the opposite direction.

Agriculture committee  Labour shortages present one of the most significant challenges across the agri-food sector. That's certainly the case for the processing industry, which is experiencing acute labour issues and growing productivity needs. It has failed to keep pace with productivity increases. The processing industry is facing this, but so is the primary production industry.

Agriculture committee  In the case of data, first of all, data is power. More knowledge will allow businesses to make better decisions. If we can drive to efficiency with decisions and data and then drive to efficiency and lower costs, I think all Canadians are going to benefit. Data is power, so I think it is about more knowledge for businesses to make better-informed decisions.

Agriculture committee  The report sticks to the margins of food processors. We are building an index because we don't necessarily have access to primary data. However, we do see trends based on the indices we can get from Statistics Canada. We see that in general, the decline in gross margins to revenue was in the range of 10% in 2022.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Ms. Hendricks. Food and beverage manufacturing revenues grew over 10% in 2022. This growth was almost entirely due to price increases in the face of higher costs. Profit margins in the sector are thin and even thinner for small businesses. This makes it difficult to avoid trying to pass on cost increases.

Agriculture committee  Yes, an increase in interest rates would probably have an impact on the amount of debt that farms would be willing to take on, as well as, perhaps, even the asset values. If the demand for assets is weaker because of higher interest rates, because it's a little harder to make a good business plan to purchase a piece of land and turn a profit on it, then perhaps you'd see the demand for asset values slow down.

Agriculture committee  The sectors that are more capitalized or that are a bit more intensive in assets would probably be feeling a little more of the crunch, especially given that maybe asset values on that are high or wouldn't climb as much as in the past. The farms that carry a little more debt because of the stability of revenues would be, perhaps, dairy and poultry farms, which historically have had a more stable flow of revenues.

Agriculture committee  Indeed, the growth in land values is largely related to the increase in incomes. In some cases, as in Quebec and Ontario, land value growth has outpaced the increase in income values. On the other hand, in the Prairies, the ratio of land value to farm income is much closer to the historical average.

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely. As Mr. Hoffort said earlier, in the most recent report that came out yesterday, basically, we are seeing that the vast majority of transactions are still between producers. It's true that we can't deny this trend where what I'll call non-traditional buyers are increasingly interested in the agricultural land market, whether as investments funds, pension funds or something else.

Agriculture committee  Eighteen months ago we released a dairy report, basically looking at the outlook for the dairy industry. One of the things we had in this report looked at the efficiency ratio, operating costs over revenues for small, medium, and large enterprises. What we found was that if you measure production efficiency in terms of operating expenses versus revenues, it doesn't matter if you're small, medium, or large.

Agriculture committee  No doubt there's been a tremendous increase in farm debt, but I would say that this coincides as well with the increase in farm cash receipts that we've witnessed as well, with record highs reached in recent years. I think you did mention 1994 as sort of a starting point of the growth.