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Solar intermittency is a major problem, and there is a need and great interest in developing a means of storing solar energy for later use when solar radiation is not available. Thermal energy storage (TES) is a technology that is used to balance the mismatch in demand and supply for heating and/or cooling. Solar thermal energy storage is used in many applications: buildings, concentrating solar power plants and industrial processes. Solar thermal water heaters capable of heating water during the day and storing the heated water for evening use are common. TES improves system performance by smoothing supply and demand and temperature fluctuations. Thermal energy storage has become a fast-growing business. According to a research report, the global thermal energy storage market is expected to reach USD 12.50 billion by 2025. The chapter describes different types of thermal energy storage systems. Brief history, current state of research and the future of thermal storage are presented. Types of thermal storages, classifications, advantages and disadvantages are discussed; important thermal and physical properties are tabulated. Advances in enhancement of thermal properties of materials are briefly discussed. Challenges, opportunities, market outlook, government incentives and polices that support deployment of energy storage systems are outlined.

We estimate the effects of risk attitudes and social interactions on technology adoption using a survey of dairy producers in Ontario. We find strong evidence that social interactions and risk attitudes have significant effects on the willingness to pay for DNA genotyping service for susceptibility to chronic mastitis in dairy.

We examine the effect of farm level cost and scale efficiencies on dairy quota exchanges in Ontario. A constrained profit maximization framework is used to illustrate the role of cost efficiency in quota exchanges (i.e., sales and purchases). Using a multinomial logit model, where net quota buyers and net quota sellers are identified our empirical results indicate that variations in cost efficiency do not have a significant effect on purchases milk production quota, whereas scale efficiency does. Younger farmers, farms with underutilized barns space and farms with a recent history of quota purchase tend to buy milk production quota.

Lilydale Co-operative Ltd was one of Canada’s largest and most geographically diversified co-operative poultry processors. In 2005, Lilydale voted to end its 65- year existence as a cooperative and converted to an investor-owned firm (Lilydale Inc.). The motivations for Lilydale’s organizational change are examined focusing on access to capital and using the sustainable growth model as the framework. For sustainable growth, a balance is required between increased actual sales and changes in financial management measures. For much of its history, Lilydale’s actual sales growth rate exceeded its sustainable growth rate. The firm may have been making financial decisions without considering all financial commitments, including increasing requirements to distribute equity to retiring members. Long-term debt was very high during the ten years prior to the decision to restructure the cooperative. Although the time period is short, since conversion Lilydale has had more reasonable growth rates.

The upheaval in the global food market involving the dramatic increases in crop prices and riots prompted by unaffordable food to many of the world’ s poorest has placed agriculture back in the public eye. Questions are being raised surrounding what has happened, why, and what can be done. This report has provided an overview of the food crisis and its potential impact on agri-food sector in Ontario. The boom in crop prices is primarily related to demand side factors rather than a supply-side shock from a production shortfall that were behind previous price spikes. There have been some supply side shifts: weather-related shortfalls occurred in the last two crop years, especially for wheat, yield increases are falling due to lagging research and development, and some countries implemented export restrictions. However, the primary push upward is due to structural shifts in demand from growing economies and biofuels (which will continue to grow albeit limited to some extent by the rising prices). Speculative activity has likely contributed to the sudden nature of the increase in price and to a bubble at the top of the market, but does not alter the fundamental demand and supply trends that have created the declining stocks. Supply cannot adjust immediately due to the annual nature of crop production, so stock levels will continue to be under pressure and crop prices supported for the next several years. The effect of higher crop prices on food prices depends on the share of the food dollar going to the farmer and the share of disposable income spent on food. These shares are large for poor households in developing countries but small for most Canadian consumers. There is a distinction between crop price and food price in Canada. Consequently, domestic food inflation will not be driven by rising crop prices but rather pushed be energy prices which will drive general price inflation.

The purpose of the study is to examine the differential effects of relative prices and diet-health link information on the degree of substitution between corn and cane sugar in the U.S. food processing sector. Our results suggest that the nature of the relationship between cane and corn sugar is complementary and time-varying; and the elasticity of substitution is more responsive to changes in relative prices than to changes in health information.

Over the past 25 years, traditional agricultural co-operatives have been challenged by competition from local investor-owned firms and multinational companies, deregulation and globalization of trade, and increased market concentration in suppliers and purchasers. At the same time, co-operatives have constantly been seeking to add value to their member services through expansion and/or adoption of new technology. The capital investment needed for these endeavours has to be financed, and for traditional co-operatives the major source of financing new investments has been long-term borrowing. As a result some co-operatives are characterized by high debt loads, which may result in increased financial risk exposure. Important factors that may influence the level of financial risk exposure are the potential conflicts between managerial self-interest and the interest of the owners of the firm (Jensen, 1986; Jensen and Meckling, 1976) and the impact of these differences on the choice of capital structure (Friend and Lang, 1988; Firth, 1995; Matthews et al., 1994). Despite the considerable literature (e.g., Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Lewis and Sappington, 1995), the impact that differences in attitudes between managers and directors/members have upon the decision making process has remained a relatively unexplained aspect of agency problems, especially in member-owned firms. This article assesses the social-psychological and demographic variables that affect co-operative decision makers’ attitudes toward long-term debt financing and their intentions to increase long-term borrowing.

The objectives of this study are to estimate the efficiency of fruit and vegetable co-operatives in Canada and to investigate the relationship between the degree of financial leverage and efficiency.

Nonparametric and parametric demand analyses are used to investigate the structural changes in egg consumption in Canada over the period 1978:1-2001:4. The nonparametric empirical results show that Canadian egg demand has undergone structural change, consistent with news coverage of egg-cholesterol nutrition issues, introduction of new products into the market, popularization of Atkin's diet and other variables. The results from the parametric method revealed that the impacts of advertising and media information index are significant and time varying. Furthermore, the media information index is found to have a significant effect on the size of advertising elasticities. With a larger number of positive media articles, the bigger the impact of shell egg advertising. The results of this study provide important information for policy makers and producers, processors in the egg industry.

In this paper, the results of a survey investigating whether risk attitudes and perceptions differ between managers and boards of directors of co-operative agribusiness firms presented. Using the framework of Fishbein's attitude-behavior model the factors underlying these differences are identified. Implications for future strategies of co-operative agribusinesses management are addressed.

Farmers make numerous decisions about what to produce, what production techniques to use, how many to plant, and when and where to buy inputs and sell outputs. Meanwhile, farmers face market and weather risks that can impact their net income. In this study, I examine the use of derivative markets as a tool for managing price and weather risks. First, I use the Mean-Variance theoretical model to examine the relationship between yield variability, price expectation, yield expectation and optimal hedge ratio. Second, I estimate optimal hedge ratio for corn, soybeans, and wheat using Ordinary Least Square, Error Correction Model, and the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity. Results reveal that optimal hedge ratios are low for each crop, yield variability and price expectation are inversely related to optimal hedge ratios, and crop yield expectation is positively related to optimal hedge ratios. These findings have important implication for risk management, policy, and welfare.

Even though the Canadian dairy industry has one of the lowest carbon footprints globally, it still comprises a significant percentage of the total emissions from agriculture. Productivity based on conventional production functions does not account for the socially undesired Greenhouse Gas emitted in dairy farming. Using the input-oriented directional distance function, I estimated the environmentally adjusted efficiency and productivity of Ontario dairy farms from 2000 to 2020. First, I estimated the annual GHG emission from each dairy farm based on the life cycle assessment methodology guidelines suggested by the International Dairy Federation. I found that the carbon footprint for Ontario dairy farms decreased by 14% over the study period. Second, I estimated the standard and environmentally adjusted efficiency and productivity. Productivity growth was decomposed into two sources: efficiency change and technical change. The results indicated that technological change had a higher contribution than efficiency change to overall productivity growth. This study was part of the Resilient Dairy Genome Project (RDGP). We gratefully acknowledge all funding and support for the Resilient Dairy Genome Project from the organizations listed at http://www.resilientdairy.ca/funders-and-partners/, as administered by Genome Canada, Genome Alberta, Ontario Genomics, Genome Quebec, and Genome British Columbia.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of milk compositional pricing policy reforms (i.e., component pricing change, solids-non-fat to butterfat ratio standard, and Class 6/7 milk class pricing policy) on the technical efficiency and milk and milk components productivity of Ontario dairy farms using the Ontario Dairy Farm Accounting Project (ODFAP) data. In this study, a stochastic input distance function is estimated to assess the technical inefficiency of the sample farms. Results indicate that the component pricing change had a positive effect on the technical inefficiency of dairy farms. A fixed-effect panel regression model estimated the effect of the change in policies towards dairy farm productivity (i.e., milk yield per cow, protein yield per cow, and butterfat yield per cow). Therefore, the results indicate that the SNF: BF ratio standard had a positive effect on milk yield, protein yield, and butterfat yield per cow. However, the Class 6/7 milk class pricing policy had negative effects on milk and butterfat productivity.

This dissertation contains three essays. The first two essays examine the factors that affect demand learning in export markets. The first essay examines whether foreign-ownership affects the demand-learning rates of Canadian exporters. Similarly, the second essay examines the effect of linguistic and geographic distance on demand learning among Colombian exporters. The third essay turns the focus to gender empowerment within households, assessing how women’s empowerment responds to household income diversification in Ethiopia. In the first essay, I assess the impact of foreign ownership on export market dynamics for Canadian exporters. I estimate the effect of foreign ownership on demand learning in destination markets. The findings suggest that domestic-owned exporters experience a high degree of uncertainty about consumer demand and thus adjust their quantity exported by larger amounts when there is a new demand shock than foreign-owned exporters do. In the second essay, I examine whether geographic and linguistic distance to destination markets affects demand learning among exporters. While exporting to nearby countries may reflect lower costs and lower cultural differences, firms with demand uncertainty may exploit these lower costs to test the waters in nearby markets. The findings of this paper suggest that firms exporting to markets further away are better able to distinguish between random shocks and signals about demand and thus react less to a new shock than a firm exporting to a nearby market. Firms that export to linguistically similar countries learn faster and react more to demand shocks than firms exporting to linguistically dissimilar countries do. In the third essay, I provide empirical evidence of the relationship between women's empowerment and household income diversification in Ethiopia. The literature notes that income diversification is an important pathway for increasing women's empowerment and lifting them out of poverty by increasing income, smoothing consumption, and increasing bargaining power. Women are found to have considerably lower levels of empowerment than men, and that income diversification has a positive effect on empowerment. More specifically, women are more empowered in households with non-farm income such as non-farm self-employment income, transfer income, and income from financial, non-farm real-estate assets. Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, Ontario Graduate Scholarship

This thesis provides evidence on the determinants of the adoption of robotic milking system (RMS) and the effect of RMS on farm-level productivity and profitability in Ontario dairy using the Ontario Dairy Farm Accounting Project (ODFAP) data. Results show that farmers' age and education levels have positive effects on the adoption of RMS. The results also show that RMS has a positive effect on farms' productivity and profitability.

The purpose of this study is to estimate technical efficiency and the elasticity of input substitution between factors in production in the Canadian food manufacturing industry. First, the estimated mean technical efficiency of the Canadian food manufacturing industry is 87.5%. Secondly, based on the estimates of Hicks and Morishima elasticities of complementarity measures, capital and labour are substitutes, whereas the capital and energy are complements to each other. Given estimates of technical efficiency, there is only modest scope for increasing aggregate productivity through improvement in technical efficiency. One implication of the findings in the study is that innovation policy that encourages investments in innovation may increase aggregate productivity growth.

The Canadian food manufacturing sector contributes about 2\% to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is a vital contributor to employment. This thesis examines the relationships between size, inventory management, and productivity in the Canadian food manufacturing sector. The findings of the study indicate that large plants are more productive than small and medium plants. Additionally, inventory turnover and productivity are positively correlated.

This thesis examines the relationships between financial constraints, innovation, and labour productivity among firms in eastern Europe and central Asia. To analyse the impact of financial constraint on firm-level innovation, this thesis follows the theoretical framework laid out by Gorodnichenko and Schnitzer (2013). Furthermore, using a multivariate probit model, financial constraints were found to decrease the likelihood of a firm introducing product, process, and production license innovations. The results also suggest that product, process, organizational, and production license innovation are complementary to each other (i.e., firms tend to introduce them together). The existence of complementarity among innovations may make it more difficult for financially constrained firms to successfully innovate. Findings also suggest that organizational and product innovations are at least positively correlated with firm labour productivity. Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance

There is a growing interest in better understanding the opportunities, benefits and applications of blockchains - i.e., distributed ledger technologies - in the Canadian agri-food sector to enhance the transparency and traceability of agricultural supply chains. This thesis uses a Best-Worst Scaling approach to elicit producers’ relative raking of incentives that may promote the adoption of blockchains. A latent class cluster analysis is used to identify groups of respondents that share similar preferences for adoption incentives and to examine the influence of risk and information on producers’ relative ranking of adoption incentives. The results show that producers are heterogeneous in their preferences for adoption incentives. Producers that prefer adoption incentives external to the farm (e.g., government subsidies) are more risk-averse than producers that prefer internal adoption incentives (e.g., farm differentiation). The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for efforts to better understand blockchain adoption incentives more generally. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA)

Meeting the ever-increasing demand for food and tackling climate change are challenges that contemporary agriculture is facing. Recent advances in genomic selection suggest that producers may be able to select for productivity-enhancing and reduced greenhouse gas emission traits simultaneously. Using a 2017 survey of Canadian dairy farmers, this thesis examines the effects of the extent of dairy produces’ concerns about greenhouse gas emissions on the willingness to pay for genomic selection for increased feed efficiency and reduced methane emissions. Producers’ willingness to pay for the technology is elicited using a double bound contingent valuation method. The results show that producers are willing to pay for the trait of increased feed efficiency, and the trait of reduced methane emissions when bundled with an increased feed efficiency trait. The finding of the study has important implications for Canada’s food security strategy and efforts to meet its global environmental commitment. I gratefully acknowledge funding by the Efficient Dairy Genome Project, funded by Genome Canada (Ottawa, Canada), Genome Alberta (Calgary, Canada), Ontario Genomics (Toronto, Canada), Alberta Ministry of Agriculture (Edmonton, Canada), Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (Toronto, Canada), Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (Guelph, Canada), Canadian Dairy Network (Guelph, Canada), GrowSafe Systems (Airdrie, Canada), Alberta Milk (Edmonton, Canada), Victoria Agriculture (Australia), Scotland's Rural College (Edinburgh, UK), USDA Agricultural Research Service (United States), Qualitas AG (Switzerland), Aarhus University (Denmark).

Producers are consistently faced with risks and uncertainties when making business decisions. Yet, behavioral economics shows that some producers are often irrational due to overconfident—a misperception of risks. This study proposes a feasible way to disentangle and estimate the effects of overconfidence and risk-aversion on business outcomes. This study utilizes a theoretical characterization of production behaviors and the Ontario Farm Income Database to discern the effects of risk-aversion and overconfidence. Results show that even though risk-aversion decreases the average business outcomes, moderate level of overconfidence would overweigh rationality under certain levels of risk-aversion, giving the agents competitive advantages to survive the market. The results shed light on the distribution of these behavioral traits within the population of Ontario cow-calf operations, and their effects on sector competitiveness which would not be observed otherwise.

This thesis provides empirical insights into the manner by which rural farmers in Pakistan access farmland using the Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey round 3.5 conducted during 2014-2015. The results suggest that approximately 86% of owned land is inherited, 13% is purchased and the remaining 1% is acquired through other means (e.g., gifts, illegal settlements). Moreover, variation in ownership documentation does not appear to affect perceptions of tenure security for inherited land. An important component of this study is an exploration of rental arrangements. Forty percent of survey respondents rent-in farmland, half of these are landless. Hence, rental arrangements are an important pathway by which land is redistributed to enable agricultural production. Regression results also confirm that the rental market contributes to redistribute land from the land-rich to the land-poor despite signs of friction in the market. These findings are relevant to ongoing efforts to improve land governance and agricultural production in rural areas of Pakistan. McCain Foundation

This thesis examines the relationship between export orientation (i.e. the participation) and productivity in Canadian food manufacturing, and determines the sources of productivity growth (i.e. technical efficiency, scale efficiency, and technical change). The relationship between productivity and export orientation was studied through the learning-by-exporting and the self-selection hypotheses. The results suggest that exporters have higher levels of productivity than non-exporters, and more productive plants self-select into export markets, but there is no evidence of learning-by-exporting. On the other hand, stochastic frontier analysis was used to decompose multifactor productivity into technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change, and technical change. The findings suggest there was a decline in productivity during the study period mostly driven by a decline in technical change over the study period. The industry experienced an improvement in technical efficiency and scale efficiency.

This thesis examines the relationship between financial capital and efficiency in Canadian agricultural marketing and processing co-operatives, using a stochastic frontier approach. The effect of financial leverage was examined in terms of different types of debt in order to determine whether the source of debt matters. The findings of the study suggest that the relationship between total debt and efficiency is negative for the fruit and vegetable industry, but statistically insignificant for the dairy industry. When total debt is disaggregated and examined by source, the relationships between debt and production efficiency depends on the source of debt. Member debt and short-term debt were both found to have no statistically significant relationship with production efficiency, whereas co-operatives with more external debt were generally less cost and technically efficient. In addition, larger co-operatives are more technically and cost efficient.

Food processing is Canada’s largest manufacturing employer, accounting for 236,000 jobs and the second largest manufacturing industry overall by revenue. However, the industry has recently experienced a considerable number of plant restructurings and a diminishing national trade surplus in processed food. The purpose of this study is to measure capacity utilization and multifactor productivity in order to examine the contribution of capacity utilization to change in productivity in the Canadian food manufacturing industry. I use data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist productivity index to measure capacity utilization and multifactor productivity in food manufacturing industry over the period 1990-2012 at provincial level. The results show every province (except Newfoundland) experienced a slowdown in multifactor productivity growth since 2000, the extent of which varies considerably by province. Capacity under-utilization is one important reason for Atlantic and Prairie Provinces’ productivity growth slowdown. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs

The Participatory Plant Breeding Project (PPB) in Honduras aims to improve the yield productivity of subsistence farmers. This thesis uses econometric analysis to estimate the effects of PPB bean variety adoption and CIAL membership on yields, using primary data from 314 surveys, collected in the summer of 2013. Survey data is used to examine the causal relationship between PPB variety adoption, CIAL membership and yields by using t-tests, regressions and propensity score matching. Results indicate that the variety adoption decision is complex (going beyond yield considerations alone); that PPB variety adoption may not have a positive effect on yields and that the effect of CIAL membership on farmers yields is unclear. This study contributes new data and analysis in support of the effort to assess the impact of an international development project. The results may not support previous studies on similar topics, suggesting future research is necessary. Ontario Graduate Scholarship, Douglas McRorie Scholarship, Soden Memorial Scholarship, Registrar`s Travel Grant, Dr. Sally Humphries

This thesis examines determinants of the adoption of total mixed ration (TMR), and the effects of the adoption of TMR on the farm level productivity and profitability of Ontario dairy farms. A sample of 320 farm level data from 2004-2008 is taken from the Ontario Dairy Farm Accounting Project (ODFAP). A probit model is estimated to examine the factors affecting the adoption of TMR; and the propensity score matching analysis is used to explore the influence of the use of TMR on sample farm’s productivity and profitability. Results from the probit model show that farmer’s age, herd size, region, breed type and feeding system have significant effect on the adoption of TMR. In turn, the adoption of TMR feeding practice has positive influence on both farm productivity and profitability. Under the propensity score matching method, the use of the TMR feeding practice has an economically significant effect on farm profits (i.e., for average farm with approximately 73 cows, the use of TMR feeding practice increases farm profits by CAD$37,091.30/year approximately) and a statistically significant increase in milk production by 1075.41 hl/cow per year.