An Economic Analysis of Western Canadian Grain Export Capacity

作者：Torshizi Mohammad^*; Gray Richard

来源：Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2018, 66(2): 255-282.

DOI：10.1111/cjag.12148

Record grain supplies combined with insufficient grain export capacity in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 crop years resulted in depressed Western Canadian grain prices costing producers several billion dollars. The exceptional size of the crop and the harsh winter weather contributing to this costly event raise an important question as to whether additional investment in export capacity is warranted. This study systematically assesses the need for additional grain export capacity in Western Canada. Somewhat conservative grain production forecasts and rational expectations storage are used within a spatial mathematical programming model to simulate a competitive market, moving grain to export positions. We find in the absence of additional export capacity there will be increasingly frequent periods of costly congestion. A 10 million tonnes (Mt) (5 Mt) improvement in both rail and West Coast capacity implies $9.2 billion ($6.0 billion) of cost-saving benefits for the producers over the 2016-25 period. While these estimates are sensitive to future realized production levels, their magnitude suggests that innovation to increase export capacity is economically important for grain producers in Western Canada.

• 单位
  Saskatchewan; Saskatoon