Regulation and Economic Concerns for Canada’s Biotechnology Industry

Canadian farmers need to be concerned with developments in the field of biotechnology. As they will be using and producing the products, their economic livelihood depends on the orderly regulation of this sector. To be certain this occurs, they are going to have to be actively involved in the process. For Canada to compete with other major players, the costs of doing business in Canada in terms of regulation must be lowered and intellectual property rights must be protected

Determinants of Food Industry Performance: Survey Data and Regressions for Denmark

This paper investigates empirically the determinants of firms' performance in the agri-food sector by using recent survey data for Denmark. Treating sales per employee as a proxy for value added, we estimate several bootstrapped regression models to draw conclusions on the marginal effects of potential performance determinants such as the form and nature of ownership, stage of the food chain and commodity sector, new product development, staff quality, firms' competitive stance, and elements of firms' strategy. To draw robust inferences we apply, besides the ordinary heteroscedasticity-corrected Tobit maximum likelihood estimator, a non-parametric least absolute deviations estimator (LAD/CLAD) based on a quantile regression procedure. The results indicate that we cannot reject the hypothesis of no influence of dominant orientation on value added. Rather, firms' focus on human capital, stage and commodity sector better explains their value addition. We reject the hypothesis that regional networks have no influence on value added. Location in �rhus, emphasis on human capital and the negative influence of outsourcing on value added all provide supporting evidence. We reject the hypothesis of no influence of foreign direct investment (FDI), and moreover propose that FDI has targeted the Danish domestic market as a source of value added. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2008 The Agricultural Economics Society.

THE SASKATCHEWAN ALL-RISK CROP INSURANCE PROGRAM: AN EXAMINATION OF REGIONAL INSURANCE VALUE

Saskatchewan All-Risk Crop Insurance Is an important Income stabilization program to grain producers. However, critics of the program maintain that it Is not a useful risk management tool for producers who farm in higher yielding regions. They support their arguments by the fact that participation rates in more productive regions are substantially lower than the less productive regions. The purpose of this paper is to examine yield expectations in conjunction with the regional design of the 1989 crop insurance program to determine if these criticisms are valid. The results of the analysis Indicate that many of the above criticisms are correct. In addition, they point out that the current premium structure of the program tends to make insurance of stubble crops a better deal than the insurance of summerfallow crops. Finally, the results suggest that crop insurance has a greater influence on land use in those areas where more marginal land exists

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Can the Canadian Wheat Board Extract Monopoly Rents? The Case of the Spring Wheat Market

The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) is a monopoly seller of wheat, durum and malting barley from western Canada. This paper examines the question whether the CWB monopoly can extract a premium in the international market place. Using actual transaction data (i.e. actual transaction prices) we estimate that the CWB charged importers an average price premium of $13.35/tonne for wheat over the period 1980-94. In periods when high quality wheat was in short supply the CWB was able to charge higher premiums.We also show that during the period of export subsidies the CWB earned farmers a premium by avoiding subsidized markets.State Trading, Wheat Marketing, Price Premium,