It's a great question. I'm not sure there's anything we can do this year, because it's May 16. Either our seeds are in the ground or they're about to be in the ground. Contracts are signed. Right now I would say if you start with farm gate, a lot of farmers are flying in the dark. They're actually committing to contracts without knowing how much they're going to pay. That is not helping.

Farmers are motivated to grow. They're motivated to produce because prices are very high, but up the food chain you're seeing a lot of consolidation. There are fewer players having a lot of power, whether it's in grain handling, processing or distribution. I know that the Competition Bureau actually registered concerns about the Shaw-Rogers deal recently. I would have hoped that the bureau would actually have registered concerns about the 1998 deal between Provigo and Loblaws, the 2005 A&P deal with Metro, and the 2015 deal between Empire and Safeway out west.

All of these deals have actually given more power, more authority and more influence to just a handful of players, which is really impacting competition. It's impacting everything we do domestically.

Internationally, it's important to recognize that we need to make sure that our supply chains remain resilient and that we continue to encourage companies and traders to trade abroad and make our agriculture much more efficient.

I have just one piece of data for you. There are only a few provinces in which the territory used to support agriculture has increased in the last five years. We're talking 1% or 2%. Those are Quebec, Alberta and, I believe, Manitoba. Since 2003, Canada is at minus 8%. We're using less land to produce more food. You can see that, right now, agriculture is under a lot of pressure to produce more. I would look into that.

Thank you.

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