Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics-Revue Canadienne D Agroeconomie最新文献

This paper examines the effect that the export boom in wheat had on US counties from 1870 to 1900. I find that increased exports in wheat, exogenously driven by declines in British wheat production, led to an unequal effect on wheat production across counties. Specifically, counties that were less well-suited to wheat production increased their wheat output relative to more productive counties. These low-yield counties also reduced their urban population share and increased the amount of agricultural activity occurring within their borders. Taken together, my results suggest that the wheat boom in 19th century America led to more wheat production in counties which were less well-suited for growing it, which slowed these counties' transition from rural to urban.

Asymmetric price transmission has been the subject of many studies in agricultural economics, but few has been said on Quebec grain market. This study uses threshold cointegration models to examine the dynamic relationship between Quebec spot and futures prices. Estimation results with daily, weekly, and monthly data from September 1994 to May 2022 are three-fold. First, the main point to keep from cointegration tests is that futures prices and Quebec local grain prices are integrated but estimations with daily data are consistent to highlight a nonlinear long-run relationship. Second, results indicate overall positive asymmetric for daily and weekly prices transmissions from futures to spot market. Third, the positive asymmetric prices transmissions shed light on the oligopoly structure of Quebec grain market and inefficiencies in the pricing mechanism which favor local grain sellers. Results with different data frequencies show that aggregated monthly prices data compared to more disaggregated data such as daily and weekly prices may lead to different results. Results imply that policymakers and market stakeholders could facilitate increased grain market competition. Grain users like Quebec hog producers need to better understand additional tools for their management of price risk like futures market and real time prices movement monitoring.

Greater women's bargaining power and decision-making within a household have been shown to increase investments in human capital. This study links women's participation in decision-making in dairy production with household investment in girls and boys in health, nutrition, and education. We survey households in the urbanizing region of Bangalore, India. We utilize a multinomial treatment effects model to analyze the individual and household factors that are associated with women's participation in sole or joint decision-making. We then assess how the type of decision-making influences a household's investments. The results first show that female decision-making households are more disadvantaged on average than other types of decision-making households. Second, we observe that female decision-makers for dairy production are more likely to have more children and earn a higher income than their husbands. Third, the main findings show that households in which women engage in joint decision-making have higher levels of investment across all categories for girls. Conversely, investments decrease in education and nutrition for both girls and boys when the wife is the sole decision-maker. Lastly, investments are enhanced further for girls when households can sell milk at a higher price.

This study developed a theoretical model to explain the consolidation of farmland and specialization in agriculture. In the model, farmers are assumed to be endowed with knowledge regarding the production of each crop, which evolves through learning. Knowledge across crops is substitutable to various degrees. The farm size distribution and specialization are shown to be equilibrium outcomes determined by the distribution of knowledge. A simulation example based on farm-level acreage data from California is presented to show the relevance of learning mechanisms and test model implications.

Our objective in this paper is to examine the growth of the price of farm milk quotas in Canada, to shed light on their patterns of growth within the last 15 years. Our quota price model is based on the Gordon growth model, supplemented by some important characteristics of the milk quota market. Our explanatory variables include the quota rental price, interest rate, and expectations of both price and quantity growth, all for the province of Alberta over the 2009–2023 time period. Our economic model of quota prices performs well by giving results with the predicted signs for all variables in our model and high levels of statistical significance except for expectations of quantity allocations when entered separately. The model has two variants, one with the expectation of growth in quota rents and the other with the expectation of growth in the quota asset price. Econometric issues related to time series problems are dealt with. The model allows calculation of policy risk, which shows an interesting pattern over this time period.

In this paper, we investigate the impacts of climate extremes on the production and trade of apples. Apple production being notoriously sensitive to climate shocks, we show that March and April temperatures and precipitations beyond estimated thresholds cause large yield reductions in Quebec and Ontario. In years when climate shocks are large and highly correlated across space, large variations in national production cause major variations in trade flows. Hence, we exploit the theoretical foundations of a sectoral structural gravity model to implement counterfactual trade experiments about harvest shocks in Canada and the United States. We report changes in tariffs, imports, exports, farmgate prices, and in consumer welfare. The shocks greatly impact trade between North American countries but have little impact on other countries except for Chile and New Zealand which see their exports grow.

Sustainability labeling has been increasingly integrated into many food product labels in response to consumer interest in purchasing sustainably produced food. While a product label may contain the phrase “sustainably produced”, little additional information is available to consumers regarding how sustainability has been enhanced, or the dimensions of sustainability encompassed by the label. Using data from a survey of 1416 Canadian consumers, we examine consumer perceptions of sustainability and preferences for broad versus narrow sustainability claims across several contexts, including the dimensions of sustainability and the scope of a sustainability standard with respect to compliance criteria, product coverage, and geographical coverage. We find low levels of consumer knowledge and understanding of sustainability labeling, heterogeneity with respect to which dimension of sustainability appeals to different types of consumers, and a general preference for broad over narrowly defined sustainability labels, particularly with respect to the scope of criteria encompassed by the label. Our findings suggest some confusion as to what constitutes sustainability in the context of agri-food, but that broader, more encompassing labels are likely to gain more traction with consumers.

Chinese beef imports have been increasing in recent years. At the same time, Chinese public sentiment toward foreign countries, including those who export beef to China, has been changing. Therefore, this research uses a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to investigate the role of ethnocentrism, country image, and product image on consumer willingness to pay for country-of-origin labeled beef. Results indicate, on average, Chinese consumers prefer domestic beef most, and value beef from Australia and the US somewhat similarly. Their willingness to pay varies based on their perceived image of the country that the beef originates from and based on their perception of the safety of the beef, that is, product image. The more ethnocentric consumers are, the more they prefer domestic beef and discount foreign beef. Importantly, the effects of ethnocentrism, country image, and product image are stronger on the willingness to pay for domestic beef than for imported beef. More generally, findings indicate that controlling for ethnocentrism, country image, and product image contributes to understanding consumer willingness to pay for products originating from foreign countries. Overall, findings suggest that stronger ethnocentric tendencies lead to lower willingness to pay for imported beef (with some exceptions), and positive country image and product image increase the willingness to pay for imported beef. Thus, it is important to consider these constructs when estimating consumer willingness to pay for imported products, especially for countries where public sentiment toward exporting countries may be prone to change in a dynamic global environment.

Increasing frequency of extreme weather events threatens the livelihoods of low-income farm households due to the heavy dependence on rain-fed agriculture coupled with the under-developed formal markets for risk management products. Thus, crop diversification is one of the widely used ex ante adaptation strategies to hedge against weather risk exposure. In this study, we use survey data from the northern Savanna zone of Ghana merged with historical weather data to shed light on the heterogeneous impact of crop diversification on farm net returns and risk exposure. We employ the dose response function and instrumental variable techniques to address potential endogeneity concerns. Overall, our findings show that crop diversification is a welfare-enhancing strategy that significantly increases farm net returns, lowers the probability of crop failure, and thus decreases downside risk exposure. Notably, our dose-response function analysis demonstrates that the positive benefits of crop diversification are particularly pronounced at lower intensities, reaching an optimal threshold. Beyond this point, the incremental advantages tend to diminish, suggesting the importance of carefully considering the optimal level of diversification for maximum benefits. The results further underscore the significant impact of both access to agricultural extension services and fertilizer usage on the adoption of crop diversification.