Farm Household Income Data in Canada: Approaches and Gaps

Canada, like other industrialized countries of the world, has seen its agriculture sector evolve dramatically over the past fifty years. Prior to the Second World War, Canadian society was largely composed of a large number of self- sufficient subsistence-level farming families, who for the most part, produced enough to feed themselves with occasionally, some surplus to trade with their neighbours, sell at community farmers' markets or provide to export markets. Farm households represented about one third of the Canadian population in 1941. Since the Second World War, however, dramatic improvements in technology in agriculture resulted in significant productivity gains. A smaller and smaller number of farm households operating increasingly larger, more specialized farms, with higher-than-average income, has been able to produce enough to feed Canadians and export to world markets. At the same time that the Canadian agriculture sector was being transformed, Canadian agriculture policy evolved. Early Canadian agriculture policy was concerned with finding immigrants to populate the vast empty Prairies and setting up experimental research farms across the country to develop and disseminate knowledge of new crops and production techniques adaptable to each individual region's climate (see Ndayisenga et al. (2002)). Subsequently Canadian agricultural policy evolved to ensure orderly marketing, price supports, production and yield insurance, farm income stabilization and support, and more recently, risk management. The objective of this paper is to describe the various sources of farm household income data in Canada and the gaps in data that have been identified over the past few years. The paper will begin with a description of the Canadian agriculture sector, including trends in farm household income. A discussion of the various sources of farm household data that are available in Canada will then be presented, including the approaches used. Finally, we will consider the data gaps that exist based on the experience of agricultural policy-makers and researchers while conducting policy development and analysis over the past few years.Consumer/Household Economics,

OVERVIEW OF AGRICULTURE STRUCTURAL PARAMETERS FOR CANADA

Agribusiness,

Nitric oxide and nitrous oxide production and cycling during dissimulatory nitrite reduction by Pseudomonas perfectomarina

The denitrifier Pseudomonas perfectomarina reduced nitrite under conditions of kinetic competition between cells and gas sparging for extracellular dissolved nitric and nitrous oxides, NOaq and N2Oaq, in a chemically defined marine medium. Time courses of nitrite reduction and NOg and N2Og removal were integrated to give NOg , and N2Og yields. At high sparging rates, the NOg yield was >50% of nitrite-N reduced, and the yield of NOg + N2Og was ~75%. Hence interrupted denitrification yields NOaq and N2Oaq as major products. The yields varied with sparging rates in agreement with a quantitative model of denitrification (Betlach, M. P., and Tiedje, J. M. (1981) Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 42, 1074-1084) that applies simplified Michaelis-Menten kinetics to NO2 > NOaq > N2Oaq > N2. The fit gave an estimate of the maximum scavengeable NOaq yield of 73 ± 8% of nitrite-N. Thus a minor path independent of NOaq is also required. The fit of the model to data at lower sparging rates, where normal denitrification products predominate, implies that the extracellular NOaq pool yield is independent of gas sparging rate. Thus in P. perfectomarina NOaq and N2Oaq are intermediates, or facilely equilibrate with true intermediates, during complete denitrification. The recovery of most nitrite-N as NO and/or N20 under perturbed conditions is not an artifact of irreversible product removal, but an attribute of denitrification in this species, and most probably it is characteristic of denitrification in other species as well

Reaction of methyl halides with seawater and marine aerosols

Methyl iodide is known to be formed biologically in seawater and has been postulated as the agent of iodine air-sea transport. Kinetic calculations and experiments demonstrate that methyl iodide reacts with chloride ion in seawater to yield methyl chloride approximately as fast as it exchanges into the atmosphere. In seawater, both methyl chloride and methyl iodide are slowly hydrolyzed to methanol and halide ions. The rate of trapping of I on sea-salt particles by reaction with atmospheric methyl iodide is shown to be too slow to account for the enrichment of the marine aerosol in I relative to seawater...

CHANGING CONSUMER DEMAND AND ITS IMPACT ON CANADIAN AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND TRADE

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how consumers in Canada, like those in the United States and Europe, have changed over the last ten years and the impact this is having on how agricultural commodities are being produced, transformed, distributed and traded. It will also be important to discuss how governments in Canada and elsewhere have reacted and how policies are being adopted to help the agriculture and agri-food sector adjust to the new realities of a more demanding and sophisticated consumer, at home and abroad.Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, International Relations/Trade,

Evidence for significant photochemical production of carbon monoxide by particles in coastal and oligotrophic marine waters

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L23606, doi:10.1029/2009GL041158.Carbon monoxide (CO) photoproduction from particulate and chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) was determined in seawater from open-ocean and coastal areas. In confirmatory tests, poisoned or non-poisoned filtered and unfiltered blue-water samples, were exposed to sunlight. CO photoproduction was 21–42% higher in the unfiltered than in the filtered samples. In a more thorough study utilizing concentrated particles prepared by 0.2-μm cross-flow filtration, samples containing varying levels of particles were irradiated under simulated solar radiation. Their CO photoproduction rates increased linearly with particle concentration factor. Particulate CO production was 11–35% of CDOM-based CO production. On an absorbed-photons basis, the former was 30–108% more efficient than the latter. This study suggests that in both coastal and blue waters these new-found particulate photoprocesses are of similar biogeochemical importance to the well-known CDOM photoproduction term.NSERC and NSF provided financial support

Supply chain management for fast-moving products in the electronic industry

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-72).The objective of this Thesis was to strategically redesign and transform the supply chain of a series of detonators in a leading Company serving the oil and gas industry. The scope of the Thesis included data gathering and analysis, and the proposal and implementation of possible solutions. The issues addressed included sourcing and partnership strategies and development of systemic inventory management policies. We optimized the inventory policies to minimize the ordering and holding costs while improving the customer service level. For this purpose, we considered the entire supply chain starting from the Company's internal and external suppliers and Subcontractors all the way to the end-customers. By considering all these players we were able to globally optimize the supply chain. The inventory policy used was a periodic review policy for which we optimized the reorder, order-up-to level and Safety Stock levels. We analyzed the effects of the forecasting error and the potential benefits of risk pooling.(cont.) We also identified and recommended a new push-pull boundary for the Company's detonator products and provided a generic platform to identify this boundary for other products within the Company. The supply chain management system and managerial insights developed from this project can potentially be extended to other products and divisions within the Company.by Konstantinos F. Zafiriou.S.M

Krueppel-like factor 15 regulates Wnt/beta-catenin transcription and controls cardiac progenitor cell fate in the postnatal heart

Wnt/beta-catenin signalling controls adult heart remodelling in part via regulation of cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) differentiation. An enhanced understanding of mechanisms controlling CPC biology might facilitate the development of new therapeutic strategies in heart failure. We identified and characterized a novel cardiac interaction between Krueppel-like factor 15 and components of the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway leading to inhibition of transcription. In vitro mutation, reporter assays and co-localization analyses revealed that KLF15 requires both the C-terminus, necessary for nuclear localization, and a minimal N-terminal regulatory region to inhibit transcription. In line with this, functional Klf15 knock-out mice exhibited cardiac beta-catenin transcriptional activation along with functional cardiac deterioration in normal homeostasis and upon hypertrophy. We further provide in vivo and in vitro evidences for preferential endothelial lineage differentiation of CPCs upon KLF15 deletion. Via inhibition of beta-catenin transcription, KLF15 controls CPC homeostasis in the adult heart similar to embryonic cardiogenesis. This knowledge may provide a tool for reactivation of this apparently dormant CPC population in the adult heart and thus be an attractive approach to enhance endogenous cardiac repair

Spatiotemporal underwater light field fluctuations in the open ocean

The light availability in the upper layer of the open sea is subject to strong fluctuations due to focusing of surface waves. This paper shows measurements of downwelling spectral irradiances as well as spatiotemporal light field patterns along the water column. Results are interpreted with respect to diverse surface waves. Direct wind develops capillary and small gravity waves that affect the light regime only up to circa 5 m water depth. At high seas and below 5 m depth, light fluctuations can be described more accurately in terms of sea state parameters such as wave height and period, rather than wind speed. Between 3 m and 25 m water depth, waves with significant heights of 1.5 m to 2.5 m provoke the strongest intensity fluctuations. In general, fluctuation amplitudes decrease and periods extend with water depth where the coefficient of variation, CV, is in average four times higher above 2 m compared to 25 m water depth