Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you said, I'm Paul Glenn, the past chair of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum. With me today is Justin Williams, our Ontario and Quebec director. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the very important issue of farm

Agriculture committee  Definitely most, if not all, of the young farmers who I know that have gone through transition planning used lawyers, accountants, bank managers, to obviously mitigate any risk in the transition. I think typically now with young farmers, we do operate them as businesses, and we'r

Agriculture committee  It's actually really tough to find institutions that are...besides FCC or some of the ag accounting firms.

Agriculture committee  Exactly, yes. I know I've struggled with that, and I've now moved to very ag-specific companies to work with because of the knowledge base. I had my accountant out to my farm for a tour and he saw my gravity wagon. He said, “Oh, is that how you plant your field?” So, there's a

Agriculture committee  Yes, it's all cost to production, so if you have some big equipment, you need some more land, then renting is definitely a very common answer. It is tricky being near more urban areas for people who are owning the farmland to rent. That farm rental relationship is a bit tougher

Agriculture committee  Probably the greatest strength of our young farmer organization is the networking. I know I've utilized a lot of information from our friends out west, some from farmers who were growing larger operations, on how they made the transition, or from people who have transitioned from

Agriculture committee  Definitely, I think it's going to start in our education system. That's been lacking starting very early in the public school system. It's educating the general public on what modern agriculture is currently. Then there would be less disconnect on how we do things and why we do t

Agriculture committee  That's a really great question.

Agriculture committee  I don't know if I have the answer. Educating the public is the biggest thing, especially in Ontario with the neonic and how that worked out. More regulation for farmers doesn't help us. It's not that regulation is bad. We're all trying to do the best thing for the environment and

Agriculture committee  Yes, something we are working on is creating a mentorship and exchange program for exiting farmers to mentor and having an exchange program for young farmers to go to those farms. There already are some programs out there now that are linking farmers looking to exit the industry

Agriculture committee  I think it's probably still in the theory area. I don't have a lot of data for you on that. It's obviously on our minds that we need to get more young farmers excited about agriculture and interested in it, because fewer people know about it, so there are fewer people wanting to

Agriculture committee  Education never stops when you're a farmer, that's for sure. A lot of your suppliers typically put on education for you. I don't know a lot of link going back to the universities, necessarily, once the farmers are on farm—and maybe you can speak a bit more to that, Mr. Deaton—but

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  In any of the data, we show there is a bit of a decrease in growth of the farm when there is a transition made. I can share that data with the chair later on. Basically, any time that the farm has to be completely bought out, there is a decrease in growth, at every stage. If yo

Agriculture committee  Generally speaking, it is a great time to be in agriculture. There's no doubt about that. I know you always hear the doom and gloom from farmers all the time, so I don't want to be like that. There are lots of young farmers excited to be in agriculture, really happy about pushing