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Agricultural Economics

Brown Economic works with various organizations to provide agricultural economic expertise. Dr. Clark and Dr. Yiridoe, at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC), are Brown Economic's primary consultants on these projects. Dr. Clark and Dr. Yiridoe have published numerous articles in the field of agricultural economics.

Examples of recent and ongoing projects include:

• post-farm traceability systems in the agri-food sector, comparing Canada, the US, Ireland, Norway, Japan and Hong Kong for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)
• yearly data collection for the Canadian Regional Agricultural Model (CRAM), for both crops modules and livestock modules for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)
• critiquing the New Brunswick potato farmers' alleged losses from the 16-day border closure in 1991 due to testing issues with PVYn, resulting in litigation in 2004-2005
• creating an economic model to predict world prices and demand of cocoa for COPAL, the Cocoa Producers Alliance

Examples of completed projects include:

• agricultural expropriation valuation- doing assessments and providing expert testimony in court
• studies of various agricultural industries in Nova Scotia (apples, blueberries, dairy farms); in PEI and New Brunswick (potatoes); in Ontario (peanuts); across Canada (potatoes, beef, potash), and studying farm prices in US agriculture
• analysis of land use policies in PEI
• submitting articles for publication to the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Journal of Agribusiness, Agricultural Systems Journal, Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and acting as a reviewer for many of these same journals
• examples of some projects are: developing rural entrepreneurs, creating food quality and safety training programmes, analysing fallow systems and nitrogen use efficiency in rice dproduction in West Africa, researching bambara groundnut and transport in Ghana's agricultural industry

Drs. Clark and Yiridoe are available to consult on agricultural economic projects, and to present papers at conference proceedings.