William Hartley Furtan

The Impact on the Canadian Rapeseed Industry from Changes in Transport and Tariff Rates

The economic viability and potential development of the Canadian rapeseed processing industry has been affected by a statute which allows raw rapeseed to be placed in export position at a rate two and one-half to three times lower than the processed oil and meal products and by a high Japanese rapeseed oil tariff. An analysis was undertaken to evaluate the effects on prices and trade flows of rapeseed, rapeseed oil, and rapeseed meal from policy changes in the Japanese rapeseed oil tariff and in Canadian freight rate policies. A four-region, three-commodity, spatial-equilibrium, quadratic-programming model of the world rapeseed industry was constructed to measure the impact of the various policy changes.

Economics of transgenic herbicide-tolerant canola: The case of western Canada

Abstract Canola that is genetically tolerant to specific types of herbicide is now coming on the market. This is one of the first transgenic products to be traded internationally. There are a number of economic and agronomic concerns with the use of this product, ranging from consumer rejection, gene introgression and the environmental effects of herbicide use. This paper analyzes the economic effects of these important issues using economic welfare analysis. We examine the case of canola in western Canada.

Welfare Effects of New Crop Variety Licensing Regulations: The Case of Canadian Malt Barley

The licensing and grading of agricultural commodities can increase consumer utility and producer income by providing more accurate market signals. However, if the regulations for licensing and grading cause market imperfections, there may be a net loss in economic welfare. The Canadian seed industry is heavily regulated. The federal government requires that new crop varieties meet numerous criteria before they can be licensed and sold to producers. In addition, the varieties of grain produced by farmers are subject to stringent grading standards, because Canadian grain is marketed by description rather than by sample. To maximize consumer utility and producer income, the two sets of regulations (licensing and grading) must be congruent. Failure to meet this requirement causes a redistribution of market benefits. This paper examines the failure of the licensing and grading regulations to meet these requirements in barley production. It also estimates the economic loss to producers from the licensing of a new malt barley variety in Western Canada.

Returns to Operator Education in Saskatchewan Agriculture

Estimates of the rate of return to education in agricultural production indicate, for the most part, that education enhances the decision-making ability of farmers in an environment of rapid technological changz. Welch has hypothesized that there are more opportunities for education to allocate resources across enterprises in an aggregate function than in a single-product production function. The estimates that indicate a high rate of return to education have related to both aggregate production functions (Huffman) and farm level production functions (Wu). Patrick and Kehrberg found both positive and negative returns to education in agricultural production functions in Brazil. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First we wish to examine the inherent disequilibrium in Saskatchewan agriculture. This was accomplished by estimating the returns to scale that currently exist in the agricultural production function. Second, we wished to determine if education is an important input in the farm operation. Finally, we tested the hypothesis that the larger the number of enterprises in the firm, the higher the returns to education. This hypothesis was tested using farm firm productionfunction estimates on grain farms as compared to grain-livestock farms. It was assumed that grainlivestock farms have more enterprises than grain farms. On grain farms, a farmer can allocate resources across crops; however, these same decisions should be available to grain-livestock farmers. Following the hypothesis set out by Welch, we expect a higher return to education on grainlivestock (GL) farms than on grain (G) farms.

Assessing the Impact of State Trading Enterprises

State Trading Enterprises (STEs) are periodically subject to intense scrutiny for their suspected negative impact on the international trade of agricultural goods. Sound empirical assessment of the impact of STEs is scant, in spite of the ongoing and intense debate over their impacts, especially in the context of reform at the WTO. In this paper we use the case of world wheat trade between 2212 country pairs over a 35 year span to assess STE impacts. Using a gravity model, we estimate a Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood fixed effects model of world wheat trade to assess the role of both the presence of STEs and STEs with monopoly power. Further addressing estimation challenges, we also estimate zero-inflated versions of Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression models. We find consistent support for the hypothesis that monopoly export STEs are associated with higher exports for their host country. Similarly, import STEs appear to inhibit wheat imports, suggesting a protectionist function.