Thank you, Chair.
I thank the witnesses for coming today. As a former 4-H leader, I know a lot about the program. In the last couple of weeks we've heard a lot from young people, potentially young farmers, about why they're not going into farming. It's mostly because, as many of you mentioned, of the high capital investment and low returns.
But let's assume that maybe we can get that turned around over the next few years. Ideally, if we have better programs maybe, or even some of the pricings.... Maybe we should have a floor price for certain products, or maybe there should be a marketing board, as Alex said, for some of the tree fruits.
That being said, Mike, you mentioned the U.S. and how their 4-H group was reaching out to the non-farm young people. My fear is that in the next few years there will be so many young people not interested, it's going to be hard to bring them back. But that being said, there might be a lot of young people in urban or suburban areas who want to get into food production or farming.
Now, some of the tax laws we have here, specifically capital gains, are mostly geared to inter-family transfers. Do you think maybe--and you can allude a little bit to what is happening in the United States--we should be making it easier, besides the training, for these young people who are off the farm to get in there? You mentioned mentoring, but I mean more like providing help if they want to get into partnerships.
Should there be a kind of overall program where you'd have tax laws, maybe, or incentives, partnerships, mentoring? How do you see that going in? Could you also talk a little bit about what you were saying about what they're doing in the United States?