Understanding Rural Canada - Octoboer 19th, 2011

03/14/25 • 44 min

Ray Bollman discusses terms, trends, and policy issues relevant to understanding rural Canada.

Transcript

Brady Deaton: My guest today is Ray Bollman. He and I will be discussing issues related to rural Canada and policy. Ray has been the focal point in Statistics Canada for rural research and analysis since the 1990's. He initiated Statistics Canada's rural and small town Canada Analysis Bulletins in 1998 and there are 62 of these bulletins now available. We'll provide a URL to them on the website. Before his retirement, he was the Chief of the Rural Research Group at Statistics Canada. Hi Ray and welcome to FARE Talk.

Ray Bollman: Yeah, thanks for calling.

Brady: Ray, let me begin by asking you, how should we think about rural? What is rural?

Ray Bollman: Well different people, we do it differently. I'm an economist, so I would look at the price of rurality and I would look at distance, density and the distance to density. And that's sort of the way the World Bank Rural Development in 2009 on Reshaping Economic Geography clearly stated the issue of regional geography as in density and distance to density. And so density then is the advantages of glomerated economies and the distance to density, there's economic distance, price and time to get there, but there's social distance and psychological distance to density. So I look at it as distance in density.

Some people will talk about is as identity. So if you feel rural, even if you're living in a city, you might behave differently. I would say gee, you're facing the same relative prices in the city, whether you feel rural or not, so I don't think you'd behave differently. Maybe that's an empirical question.

Brady: So for some folks, when you talk about glomeration effects being associated with the density character of urban and then lower density in rural, what are we talking about? A glomeration effects occur in urbanized areas ...

Ray Bollman: It’s because it's a lower cost of people living together and working together. Firms, if they're beside each other, in much the same industry have lower cost because they have better access to specialized labor force. Their employees would go to the same church, or drink at the same bars, or curl at the same curling rinks, and over the conversation just exchange of tasset knowledge. They would just exchange tidbits on how things are done in their particular occupation or their particular industry. And if that firm was in a more remote area, that exchange of tasset knowledge's could not take place. You could read on the internet the written knowledge but the embedded or tasset knowledge that the specialized workers have, that they do not write down, just cannot be exchanged over the internet, you have to do that at the elbow of the master, if you will, and that's a big advantage of a glomerations and having both people and firms being close together.

Brady: So, I guess, part of the idea, is if you're in an urban area, if you take the same person, or the same firm, from a rural area and move them to an urban area, they may be more productive. Because of the exchange of this tasset knowledge and the interactions with experts in the area.

Ray Bollman: Yep.

Brady: Yeah.

Ray Bollman: Yep. More productive or lower cost unit output, same thing. That's right.

Brady: Okay so that's part of the density issue of rural. And the distance, can we think about that, and you mentioned this is cost, takes longer to transport good and information to rural areas.

Ray Bollman: Yeah, to rural areas and from rural areas. So in some sense, the high price distance is an advantage for some rural firms, cause they have a distance tariff and so you might be able to set up a business in a rural area because it's too expensive to import that service, or that facility, yeah that service from an urban area. So the distance is a nice tariff barrier. But the other side is, if you're producing something in a rural area, it's going to cost you something to ship it to the urban market. And it's going to cost you something that you're gonna have a harder time finding out how that niche, or that product, or that market, is developing and how you should change your product. If you're living in the middle of the market, you have an intuitive feel how that market is changing but if you're living away from the market and shipping it to that market, you have harder time just being with the market and I don't know ... what color you have to do, what your promotion should be, how fast you have to change your good or service. So it's just not being aware of the changing market if you're at a distance and so there's a bit of higher cost on the market research side.

Brady: Now I notice in a number of your writings, and we'll makes these available on our website, but you make the point, I think it's a really important one, that rural is not necessarily l...

Ray Bollman discusses terms, trends, and policy issues relevant to understanding rural Canada.

Transcript

Ray Bollman: Yeah, thanks for calling.

Brady: Ray, let me begin by asking you, how should we think about rural? What is rural?

Ray Bollman: Yep.

Brady: Yeah.

Ray Bollman: Yep. More productive or lower cost unit output, same thing. That's right.

Brady: Okay so that's part of the density issue of rural. And the distance, can we think about that, and you mentioned this is cost, takes longer to transport good and information to rural areas.

Brady: Now I notice in a number of your writings, and we'll makes these available on our website, but you make the point, I think it's a really important one, that rural is not necessarily l...

Previous Episode

The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB): Assessing the future of wheat marketing in Canada. - October 20th, 2011

Dr. Murray Fulton and Dr. Brady Deaton discuss the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB)

Transcript

Brady Deaton: Welcome to FARE Talk where we set out to provide enduring discussions on contemporary topics relevant to our economy with particular emphasis on food, agriculture and the environment. My name is Brady Deaton Jr. Of the Department of Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph. I'll be your host.

Today, Dr. Murray Fulton and I will be discussing what's going on with the Canadian Wheat Board. Murray is an agricultural economist and a professor in the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the university of Saskatchewan. He has a long interest in Agricultural policy and in marketing systems. He is the co-author of a report by the Economic Council of Canada titled, Canadian Agricultural Policy and Prairie Agriculture, and has extensively studied the structure and behavior of the agricultural marketing systems.

Murray, thanks for being with us.

Murray Fulton: Oh it's a real pleasure.

Brady: Murray, what's going on. How do we start this. How do we start to understand what's going on with the Canadian Wheat Board. Keep in mind there'll be people tuning in who aren't aware of the current situation.

Murray: Good starting point Brady. Here's what's going on. What we're seeing in Canada over this next year, I mean, by next summer, we will have in place in Canada a completely different marketing system for wheat and that includes Durum and Barley for human consumption, malt and barley.

When I say a completely different system, I mean that in the strongest sense. What is happening is the replacement of a marketing system that, while it's evolved in some considerable ways, has retained the major fundamental structure that it acquired back in the 1930s and the 1940s. That's a mixture of an administrative and market system with Canadian Wheat Board playing a key role in that grain handling and transportation system for those grains, wheat and barley, in Western Canada.

What we're going to have by next July is some kind of much more market oriented system without the Wheat Board, at least without the Wheat Board as a compulsory marketing agency, which has been the case since the 1930s. There is still a question, I'll come to this at some point about whether or not a voluntary Wheat Board might be in place. But regardless of that central role, that the Canadian Wheat Board was playing, will no longer exist.

There is considerable discussion going on by farm organizations, the industry participants, these are the railways, the elevator companies, the millers, as to exactly what kind of rules are going to be put in place come next July and August.

Brady: All right. One of the terms that's often used this Single Desk Selling Authority. My understanding is that that ensures that the Canadian Wheat Board can basically purchase all of the wheat and barley for export or human consumption. Is that for all of Canada or just particular provinces.

Murray: The Wheat board only applies to the Western wheat growing area. This includes the grain growing areas in [inaudible 00:03:40] Saskatchewan, and Alberta and up into the Peace River area as well. Wheat growing in Ontario does not for instance, does not come under the auspices of the Canadian Wheat Board.

You're right the term that is used is the Single Desk Selling. This is actually key to that central role that the Canadian Wheat Board has been playing. Just very quickly what this Single Desk means is that all farmers in the [inaudible 00:04:14] Wheat Board area are required by legislation to deliver their wheat or durum or barley for human consumption to the Canadian Wheat Board. The Canadian Wheat Board then on behalf of the farmers then markets that grain, both domestically and internationally.

What the board then .... This is an additional element in its, it's not strictly connected with the Single Desk though it's grown up with it. What the Wheat Board has done for the most part then is take that grain, all the receipts from that grain that it sells and offers back to farmers a single pool price. All farmers, basis the export position get the same price. Regardless of whether the grain that the farmer delivered to the Canadian Wheat Board was sold in November at a particular price or in May at a different price or even sometime in the middle of July at perhaps at a third price, all farmers would get exactly the same price.

Now, what I need to say is that, that's adjusted, the price that an individual farmer will get will be adjusted for where that farmer is located in the grain growing region. The reason is that, off of that price that the Wheat Board provides, has to come the cost of grain transportation and grain handling. Depending upon where you are and the kinds of distance you are to port, or the degree of competition that the...

Next Episode

Standards: Recipes for Reality - July 15th, 2011

Dr. Busch argues that standards play a central role in constructing reality.

Transcript

Brady Deaton: My guest today is Dr. Laurence Bush. He and I will be discussing his forthcoming book titled Standards: Recipes for Reality. The book will be published by MIT Press. Laurence Bush is university-distinguished professor in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University and co-directs the Center for the Study of Standards in Society. Larry, thanks so much for joining us.

Laurence Bush: Good morning, Brady. It's a pleasure to do so.

Brady: Larry, after reading your book, I saw in every newspaper I picked up the issue of standards, and I found it was particularly relevant to the area of agriculture economics, but before I focus on those issues, I'd like to just start off broadly, and ask you about what you mean by the idea that standards are the way and the means by which we construct reality.

Laurence Bush: Yeah. The thing about standards is that they very, very quickly become taken for granted objects, whether they are texts, or they are physical objects, like for example, weights and measures. These things take on a taken for granted character, and as a result, become part of the reality that we expect. For example, if I get in a car that I've never seen, the cars are sufficiently standardized, and I can very quickly figure out how to drive that car. It doesn't require any special training. Once I've learned how to drive a car, I can drive any car.

Brady: In your book, you have a number of examples that are fascinating, and I wonder if you might just talk about some of the ways that we encounter standards that we might not think have found your discussion about time, and railroads, and the albino rats in the laboratory experiments particularly compelling. Could you pick a couple of those examples, and just discuss them?

Laurence Bush: Sure. Let's talk about the ones you mentioned, and maybe we'll move on to some others. If you take the example of railroads, obviously one realizes immediately that in order to have a system of railroads that crosses your entire country, you have to have the same track gauge. That part actually didn't occur in the United States until the 1880s, and was largely the result of building the transcontinental railroad, and deciding that a particular gauge was going to be used for that, and then gradually moving towards that being the standard gauge for all railroads. More complicated than that, and equally important, perhaps maybe even more important, was the fact that until something that used to be called railroad time, and that we today call standard time was developed, riding on trains was an extremely dangerous affair. Let me give you an example. Most railway tracks were single track lines, so that meant that if a train were to leave one end of the line, it had to arrive at a crossing somewhere, where there would be a siding.

It would pull off, and wait for a train coming the opposite direction to go past. Since you didn't have standard time, that is to say, every little town had its own time, what that meant was that it was very difficult to predict where those two trains were going to come to the crossing point, where they have to go past each other. The result was an enormous number of head-on collisions. There were several ways to solve that. The most obvious way to solve that was to build two tracks, but to build two tracks was quite an expensive proposition, especially if there wasn't sufficient freight on the line to justify a second track. The ultimate solution was the creation of standard time, which allowed a given train to leave at a particular time that would be immediately knowable to people on the other end of the line and thereby to ensure that the trains would manage to pass each other at a point where there was a siding, and wouldn't collide head-on.

I think that's just a few of the standards, but to that we would of course have to add that there needed to be standards for the track bed, so that trains that were heavier wouldn't sink into the mud. There had to be standards for bridges. There had to be just an enormous array of standards for the railways, and they had to be distributed across an entire nation, at the very least across an entire nation. In Europe, of course, they had to be distributed across many nations. Even today, there are several European nations that have standards that are not compatible with the most common standard, so Spain, for example, accepting its high-speed trains that have just recently been put in, all of the other lines in Spain are simply not compatible with the standards in the rest of Europe. You literally have to get off a train at the border, walk across, and get on another trainer. Obviously rather time-consuming and clumsy kind of thing to have to do.

One of the other cases where you find standards is in science itself, so for example, i...