摘要：
This study examines the economic impact of the Canada - U. S. Free Trade Agreement on the Canadian hard wheat flour milling industry and provides a general indication of the magnitude and direction of potential trade flows in hard wheat and hard wheat flour. The economic model used is a spatial equilibrium transshipment model. It is a least-cost model that minimizes the total wheat procurement, milling, and transpoilation costs, while meeting a fixed regional demand for flour. A principal contribution made by this study to the modeling of wheat-related problems is the addition of a protein constraint which requires that a specified flour protein conrent be met at each milling site. In general, the results of the study indicate that free trade does not pose a significant threat to the Canadian flour milling indusrry. On the other hand, there would appear to be limited new oppoftunities for flour exports to the United States in a free trade environment. The model also indicates that there are limited prospects for exports of Canadian wheat to the United States. There appears to be a grearer possibility of exports of U. S. wheat to eastern Canada. It is recognized that the assumptions required of linear programming models such as linearity, additivity, divisibility, finiteness, and proponionality limit their ability to provide realistic economic models. Traditionally, analysis has focused on the optimal solution. Given the restrictive assumptions required, and thus the imperfect representation of the real problem, solutions that deviate from the solution optimum within an acceptable range are considered in this study. A number of nearly optimal solutions are generated for the empirical model. These alternative solutions provide a valuable source of information that is not available from the optimal solution. Alternative solutions are generated that differ substantially from the optimal solution yet exceed the least cost objective value only marginaily.
