Average Canadian farm incomes tend to be consistently lower than non-farm incomes. Many reasons, including aggregate overproduction are advanced as possible explanations of the above problem. This thesis attempts to determine whether overproduction has been one of the causes of the farm income problem. The bulk of information used in this study was time series data as prepared by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics for the years 1935 to 1965. A model was constructed to test two related hypotheses regarding the presence of excess capital formation and its effect on income and overproduction. The basic findings of the study were that capital formation was not greater than required to produce an aggregate supply of agricultural products equal to aggregate demand. The growth in aggregate supply and aggregate demand were found to be very similar for the period 1935 to 1965, thus indicating that the farm income problem was not aggravated during this era by overproduction. In subsequent analysis, a broader view of the problem was undertaken. To begin, it was established that per capita farm incomes have been growing at a rate similar to that of non-farm incomes. In addition the so called "cost-price squeeze" was not found when the entire 1935 to 1965 period was observed but rather was only found in subperiods. Factor share analysis was used to show that agricultural capital offered returns at least equal to the opportunity costs of capital. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

The objective of this study was to examine the farm organization and management of the University Research Farm at Oyster River. Its present resource use and a normative analysis postulating a more desirable organization of enterprises is presented. The method for the positive analysis was to prepare inventories, net worth statements and operating statements for the fiscal years 1962-63, 1963-64, and for the calendar year 1964. From this data, measures of performance were calculated and compared with similar data from regional studies of dairy farming on Vancouver Island and in the Fraser Valley. In addition, comparisons were made with budget studies in Washington State. The University Farm operated at a loss in each of the three periods, although the results for the 1964 calendar year showed considerable improvement. Costs at Oyster River farm were higher than in the studies used for comparison, due to higher overhead costs and higher wage rates. However, measures of physical performance were generally equal to regional averages. In making this evaluation, consideration was given to the development and expansion programs undertaken in recent years. The record keeping system was reviewed, and an alternative method proposed which will facilitate the evaluation of factor use. Linear programming was chosen for the normative analysis, because it had the advantage of being able to recommend optimal enterprise combinations after considering a relatively large number of alternative activities and resource constraints. Although more activities could have been considered in the programmes, it was decided a priori to limit the number to those which could reasonably be established immediately, or in a period of a few years. Included in this study were 15 dairy activities, two for beef, one for sheep, and one for potatoes. It was necessary to consider the purchase of hay and the employment of additional labour. Resource constraints were included for land, nine labour periods, operating capital and building space. Of the five analyses undertaken, one included as a prerequisite 30 Ayrshire cows and permitted labour purchases for all periods. This particular analysis is of interest in view of the necessity for maintaining the Ayrshire herd for experimental purposes. With this initial herd requirement the optimum plan also introduced 56 Holstein cattle and 40 acres of potatoes. The return to fixed factors of production was maximized at $29,324.51, representing a rate of return on investment of 5.8%. The stability of the optimum plans with respect to price changes was determined. The normative analysis specifies a higher level of production per cow than is presently being achieved, but the level is within the reach of a commercial operation. A more serious limitation lies in the establishment of a shipping quota for potatoes. It would take a number of years to establish an adequate quota and the initial acreage would have to be on a smaller scale. However, in principle the situation is no different from that encountered in building up a milk quota, and therefore the establishment of a potato enterprise may be regarded as a desirable long-run objective. The remaining four analyses define optimal programmes for recommended activities under varying conditions of enter; prise combination and resource availability. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

This study analyses the adoption and rejection of some dairy farm innovations by Lower Fraser Valley dairymen. It also analyses use of information sources, length of time spent in the adoption process, reasons for delay in proceeding through the adoption process, reasons for rejection and discontinuance of innovations, and dairyman-district agriculturist contact. Data for the analysis were collected by interviewing a representative sample of the Lower Fraser Valley dairymen. There was a distinct tendency for the earlier adopters to have large farms, a high production per cow, less than 20 years farming experience, a high farm plus off-farm employment income, large numbers of dairy young stock, office visits with the district agriculturist, agriculture courses at vocational schools, and enjoyment from dairying. There were no significant differences between the earlier and later adopters regarding age, years of school completed, social participation, tenure, specialization, use of hired labour and place of birth. A number of the respondents had had no contact of any type with the district agriculturist in the year previous to the interview but on the average each respondent used 2.53 types of contact. When classified by the nature of the activity, the most used sources of information were personal, followed by individual instructional, mass and instructional group. When classified by origin, the most to least used sources were personal, commercial, government and farm organization. The proportions in which the information sources were used for the two groups of innovations differed. On the average each respondent was unaware of 2.19 of the 10 innovations and continuing in the adoption process for 1.57. Rejection had occurred for an average of 4.38, adoption for 1.66 and discontinuance for 0.20 of the 10 innovations. Almost half the decisions to reject innovations were made at the awareness stage in the adoption process. From the laggard to the early adopter-innovator category, unawareness and rejection decreased while continuation in the adoption process, adoption and discontinuance increased. Situational factors made up more than two-thirds the reasons for delay in proceeding through the adoption process but characteristics of the innovations made up more than two-thirds the reasons for rejection and discontinuance of innovations. The rate of rejection and discontinuance was higher and adoption lower when less than one year was spent than when one or more years was spent in the adoption process. An adoption tendency score was derived and compared with the adoption score but it could not be determined that use of one or the other was a more useful way of identifying differences among the respondents. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

The basic objectives of this thesis are to build an earnings function for farm incomes of Canadian farm operators, and estimate the rate of return to schooling. It is hypothesized that the low levels of farm income are related to the low investment in education by farm operators. If reasonable estimates of positive returns to schooling are found, they will be useful for policy makers in considering the improvement of the quality of farm operator labour via schooling, as an alternative measure to increase farm income. To achieve the goals of this study, an earnings function is built for the group of entrepreneurs, in particular the farm operators. As a test of functional form a digression is made and a value added approach discussed and utilized as an alternative way of computing the contribution of schooling to farm income. Although both methods yielded significant estimates of the return to schooling comparable to previous studies, the value added approach was found to be a better specified formulation with respect to estimating the productivity of schooling in farm production. The estimate of the marginal product of schooling using the earnings function approach was found to be higher as we concentrated on the full-time farmers. For the value added approach, the estimates differed as we varied the input specification, being higher as we decrease the number of decision variables in the estimating equation. Estimates for both models however have their respective biases and shortcomings attributable mainly to the variables omitted in both specifications. These estimates could be improved with the availability of better specified variables and use of an alternative analytical procedure. In addition to providing strong evidence that schooling is a significant determinant of farm incomes, this study also led to another important conclusion. Using a transformed labour variable in the value added function at the census division level led to an important finding that a similar output-input relationship exists in the agricultural sectors of both the U.S. and Canada. Specifically the relationship was identical for the elasticities of output with respect to labour, with respect to education (schooling), and with respect to the weighted labour variable (product of labour and schooling) values of selected years. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

This thesis is an investigation of the origins of the tenant farmer movement prevalent in Japan in the 1920 and '30s. This movement was a social movement of considerable importance. Accordingly, much research, both Japanese and Western, has been done on the movement. The concern of this thesis is with the origins of the movement at the rice-shoot level. The question addressed is; Why did the movement develop at this time in Japan's history? Events on the village level are investigated in search for the answer to this query. I have concerned myself with the 1920s alone since the developments in the 1930s merely represent an extension of those of the previous decade. The sociologist James Scott has recently developed a theoretical framework for investigating the origins of tenant unrest as a universal historical phenomenon. This framework was first published in an article in the Journal of Asian Studies entitled "The Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds and Social Change in South East Asia" I have found this framework to provide a useful means of organizing the material relating to the origins of tenant unrest in Japan. The basic premise of Scott's theory is that the vertical ties of loyalty binding the client to his patron are based on the receipt of basic goods and services from the patron. The client's minimum demands are subsistence guarantee and protection. This bond can lose its legitimacy if the patron no longer supplies the goods and services expected by the client. Under these conditions the potential for tenant unrest is created. This potential, however, is not always realized. Whether the patron loses his legitimacy without a client reaction or not depends on several factors. Three of the more important factors that are investigated herein are the state of the client's economy, the means for the client to mobilize and influences beyond the village that either encourage or discourage the expression of his discontent, I argue herein that the 1andlord-tenant relationship in Japan is a patron-client relationship and that changes in Japanese society generally and Japanese rural society specifically led to the loss of legitimacy of that relationship. Four specific changes contributed to that development. The increase in absentee landlordism, the increasing tendency for landlords to invest their money outside of the rural sector, the steady decline in the number of cultivating landlords and the increasing political identification of the landlord with the prefectural bureaucracy all combined to alter the quality of and 1ord-tenant relations and gradually divided the village along class lines. It was this loss of legitimacy of the landlord-tenant relationship that created the potential for tenant unrest. The realization of this potential in the form of organized tenant farmer movement depended primarily on three factors. First, the economic conditions prevailing in Japan in the 1920s were such that the tenant desperately needed the goods and services traditionally provided by the landlord. In the absence of an alternate source of supply the tenant was forced to react against the loss of the services. Second, the existence of a village level tenant farmer union enabled the tenants to successfully mobilize their resources and confront the landlords with their demands in form of a collective bargaining unit. Finally, in order for the movement to have developed it was also necessary that the tenant farmer's traditional attitude toward his landlord change. This change was fostered in large part by the breakdown in the traditional landlord-tenan relationship, but other political changes in Japanese society were not without effect. The labor movement and tenant participation within it was particularly important in fostering changes in tenant farmer consciousness and the development of a class conscious tenant farmer movement. These three conditions are the factors crucial to the realization of the potential for tenant unrest that led to the development of the tenant farmer movement in the 1920s. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Farm machinery is a vital input for production agriculture and, as a result, is a significant part of the agricultural economy. Despite its great importance, there has been relatively little academic analysis on the driving forces behind farm machinery sales over the past several decades. The studies that do evaluate farm machinery sales all do so regarding annual sales despite shorter-term sales data being available. These previous studies primarily use traditional macroeconomic variables, tailored to the agricultural industry, to explain farm machinery sales. Recently, with the creation of the Ag Economy Barometer Survey in October 2015, farmer sentiment data is being collected. Studies using consumer sentiment data to evaluate consumer demand have found sentiment data useful when including it in demand models, especially for consumer durable goods. This study evaluates farm machinery sales, specifically two-wheel-drive tractors with 100 horsepower or higher, using both traditional macroeconomic variables and farmer sentiment data. The evaluation begins by looking at annual tractor sales from 1978 to 2019 using machinery prices, prices received for outputs, prices paid for inputs, lagged net farm income, interest rates for loans specifically for farm machinery, farm assets, and the number of acres harvested. The annual models are used to derive elasticities with respect to farm tractor sales, and the quantity demanded is most responsive to changes in machinery prices, the number of acres harvested, prices received for crops and livestock, and the level of farm assets. Out-of-sample estimations aids in evaluating the forecasting power of the models with the best statistical fit. The model with the best out-ofsample performance forecasts 2020 sales of farm tractors with 100 HP and above using various assumptions for agricultural economic conditions in 2020. The model estimates a record low in tractor sales dating back to 1978. The annual models are then re-estimated using quarterly data spanning from 2009 to 2019. The quarterly models have less statistical fit than their annual counterparts. This reduced model performance is likely due to the seasonal nature of farm tractor sales and that some of the explanatory variables are only updated on an annual basis, limiting their ability to capture the seasonal variations. Finally, the quarterly models are estimated again to include farmer sentiment data. At the time of the study, only 17 quarterly observations of farmer sentiment data had been collected, significantly limiting the evaluation. The limited number of observations results in an inconclusive outcome regarding the explanatory power of farmer sentiment data.

A survey of the localised distribution of Culicoides obsoletus and Culicoides pulicaris was performed on a dairy and sheep farm in south-west England. Culicoides obsoletus and C. pulicaris have both been confirmed as vector species for the transmission of bluetongue virus in Europe. Sampling was done using motorised black-light suction insect traps. Seventeen traps were set around the farmyard and animal housing and five traps were set in varying pasture locations. Sampling was carried out on eight occasions between mid-September and mid-October 2008. The trapped Culicoides were counted, speciated, sexed and the reproductive stages of the females were recorded. Culicoides obsoletus, C. chiopterus, C. scoticus, C. dewulfi and C. pulicaris (group) were identified during the study. The trap sites were selected to examine the Culicoides populations associated with a wide range of microclimates. The selected sites included manure stores; forage feed stores; yard areas and sites surrounding as well as inside the animal housing. Comparisons were made between Culicoides numbers trapped from different directional sides of the animal buildings and the numbers found inside compared to numbers found outside the buildings. Culicoides numbers collected from the animal areas were compared to the non-animal areas and to the manure and forage sites. The field sites consisted of a marsh area; stream; water trough; open field site and a group of trees in a hedge field boundary. Culiccompared catch sizes from the field trap sites were compared to each other and to the farm holding sites. The highest number of Culicoides trapped were at the farm holding sites, apart from one catch on one occasion from a single field site. Weather changes, particularly high wind speeds with direction changes appeared to reduce the catch sizes during some of the trapping occasions. A greater number of C. obsoletus were collected from both the farm and field sites although a higher relative proportion of C. pulicaris was collected from the field sites. Of the C. obsoletus group, C. dewulfi was only found in farm holding catches, not at any of the field sites. The remaining three sibling species were found in both the farm and field catches. Relatively high numbers of Culicoides were found within the animal housing, with external numbers apparently influencing those found within the housing. An increase in numbers of Culicoides trapped inside the buildings may have been associated with a small shed size and possibly with straw bedding. A relative shift in the Culicoides population into the buildings appeared associated with prolonged high wind speeds. Widely varying female life stages found at all of the farm trap sites suggested possible dispersal of the Culicoides populations between these sites. Populations appeared to remain localised around the farm holding, but possibly dispersed over greater distances from the pasture locations. A wide distribution of breeding sites was suspected around the farm holding. A ranking system was used to identify specific areas associated with increased numbers of female Culicoides collected from these sites. Three sites surrounding a straw bedded cow shed were highlighted as higher risk Culicoides exposure sites; two sites adjacent to a cubicle shed; inside the calf housing; the manure store area and the silage store area. A field site with trees in a hedge boundary was the only high-risk field site identified. Multilevel modelling was used to examine for possible factors influencing Culicoides numbers. Factors examined included wind, temperature and humidity variables; distance from manure, forage, water and trees and livestock variables such as: time of contact, time since contact and distance from sheep and cattle. The model suggested wind speed at light trap setting and an increased time since contact with cattle both appeared significantly associated with reduced Culicoides numbers. Culicoides obsoletus numbers also appeared significantly reduced with increasing distance from manure. From an on-farm risk assessment point of view the farm holding area of a dairy farm as a whole should generally be considered a high-risk site for Culicoides exposure and specific pasture sites can periodically become high exposure sites. Copyright / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Veterinary Tropical Diseases / unrestricted

Congress passed a revised Farm Bill in 2014 that amended the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) to, hopefully, increase the speed with which natural resource issues could be addressed. Federal land management has often been condemned for being time-consuming and burdensome, chiefly in situations that require rapid response, such as insect disease and fire. The amendment in the 2014 Farm Bill is meant to address this concern. The amendment would allow for the insect and disease restoration projects on U.S.D.A. Forest Service land to fall under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as categorical exclusions, provided that collaboration occurs while creating and implementing the projects. This new provision could allow for the U.S.D.A. Forest service to create and implement restoration projects at a faster rate than ever before. Each state's Governor was required to nominate restoration lands in their National Forests. These Nominations ranged from very comprehensive to extremely ambiguous and from just a few acres to entire national forests. This research documents why there was variation in designation nominations and what potential benefit this new amendment could bring to future natural resource management.

No description available.