This 2008 report provides an economic overview of the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system. It is meant to be a multi-purpose reference document to provide: an introduction to the agriculture and agri-food system; a snapshot of structural changes that are occurring throughout the system in...

This paper presents an analysis of agricultural contracts using a transaction costs approach. We contend that in a context of modern agriculture, with well defined property rights, agricultural contracts must balance costs and benefits, aligning tenant and landlord incentives towards a similar...

It is widely believed that not only a Green Revolution in a crop sector but also a White Revolution in a dairy sector has generated the great momentum of agricultural development in India since the late 1960s. However, due to the dominance of sector-specific analyses, the importance of the...

Certified organic production by small-scale farmers in developing countries is increasingly promoted as an opportunity to access a growing and dynamic market, while at the same time, enhance productivity and improve incomes. Nevertheless, adoption has been limited. The economics literature...

A rectilinear regression model using the year-ending commercial corn stocks-to-use ratio and a set of dummy variables representing policy changes and weather-related production shocks explains more than 98 percent of the variation in the season average corn price paid to farmers in the 1963-2002...

This paper analyzes a monopolist's behavior when consumers cannot observe the production standards. These types of products are usually known as credence goods. The steady-state level of quality with credence goods is found to be lower than that with experience goods, and perfect information...

The role of price risk in sow farrowings is investigated by using bivariate ARCH-M and GARCH-M models and a nonparametric kernel estimator. To account for the relevant time horizon of irreversible supply decisions, predictions for mean price and conditional price variance are iterated forward....

The U.S. meat products industries have experienced increasing consolidation. It has been speculated that this has resulted from cost economies, perhaps associated with technical change or trade factors. It has also been asserted that increased concentration in these industries may be allowing...