Environmental and Economic Impact Assessments of Environmental Regulations for the Agriculture Sector: A Case Study of Hog Farming

A multi-year research study was established under the environmental pillar of the Agriculture Policy Framework (APF) to evaluate the role and impact of existing farm level environmental regulations administered by local, provincial, federal governments. The Phase 1 study entitled "Inventory and Methodology for Assessing the Impacts of Environmental Regulations in the Agricultural Sector" was released in March 2006 on AAFC online. There is a growing concern about the impact and effectiveness of environmental regulations, specifically impact on the competitiveness of primary agriculture. Empirical analysis is required to better understand the exact role that agri-environmental regulations play in determining a farm's cost structure and to compare difference between provinces within Canada. With this purpose in mind, in Phase 2, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), has commissioned hog case study to increase the policy makers' and industry's understanding of the impact and role of environmental regulations in the farming sector. The study estimated the compliance costs of existing agri-environmental regulations for a newly established -600 sow farrow to finish-hog facility in 2006. It was also assumed that the facility would follow good farming practices (i.e. sufficient land available to absorb the manure from the operation). The results show that environmental regulation compliance costs were generally less than 1% of total annual production cost.Environmental regulations, hog operation/farming, compliance cost, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics,

THE COMPETITIVENESS IMPACTS OF CANADA'S AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT REVIEW REGULATIONS; FINAL REPORT

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Environmental and Economic Impact Assessments of Environmental Regulations for the Agriculture Sector: A Case Study of Hog Farming

A multi-year research study was established under the environmental pillar of the Agriculture Policy Framework (APF) to evaluate the role and impact of existing farm level environmental regulations administered by local, provincial, federal governments. The Phase 1 study entitled "Inventory and Methodology for Assessing the Impacts of Environmental Regulations in the Agricultural Sector" was released in March 2006 on AAFC online. There is a growing concern about the impact and effectiveness of environmental regulations, specifically impact on the competitiveness of primary agriculture. Empirical analysis is required to better understand the exact role that agri-environmental regulations play in determining a farm's cost structure and to compare difference between provinces within Canada. With this purpose in mind, in Phase 2, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), has commissioned hog case study to increase the policy makers' and industry's understanding of the impact and role of environmental regulations in the farming sector. The study estimated the compliance costs of existing agri-environmental regulations for a newly established -600 sow farrow to finish-hog facility in 2006. It was also assumed that the facility would follow good farming practices (i.e. sufficient land available to absorb the manure from the operation). The results show that environmental regulation compliance costs were generally less than 1% of total annual production cost

Understanding the Structure of Canadian Farm Incomes in the Design of Safety Net Programs-super-1

"The effectiveness of safety net programs in meeting their purpose depends implicitly on the nature of farm profitability distributions. This study provides an empirical characterization of farm operating profit distributions and assesses the implications for Canadian safety net programs. Pooled time series data from the Statistics Canada Tax Data Program and the Farm Financial Survey is queried across a range of farm types and provinces, with quartile distributions of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) within four farm-size categories analyzed. The results show that regardless of farm type or province, there is greater variation in operating profit within a sales category than there is across the sales categories, and that the range in operating profit increases with size, revealing some very profitable small farms and unprofitable large farms. Thus, the discussion of the social value of farm stabilization programs ought not to be focused on farm size alone." Copyright 2007 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society.