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Canadian agriculture and the rural economy are caught up in the process of global economic integration. This paper argues that new coalitions and contractual agreements are required to keep up with this globalization. The Uruguay Round of the GATT is an example of the effort of the international economy to keep up with global change as various coalitions renegotiate a trade agreement. Market processes at work on restructuring the rural economy should be supplemented to cope with the concomitant effects of market failure. Coalitions among rural interests, cutting across all sectors from agriculture through to forestry and services can supplement the market. Contracts can link rural and urban economies where markets fail. The window of opportunity for substantive gains from coalitions within agriculture alone is almost closed. The meaning of rural is changing rapidly. Greenness, countrysides, smallness, simplicity and remoteness still convey ruralness. However, the many different types of rural lifestyles and preferences render simplistic rural/urbam distinctions meaningless (Fuller et al, 1991). There is now a need to combine identity with one's home and community with the requirement to interact in several places at once to achieve the quality of life expected today. A global awareness of opportunities, risks, competitors and predators is now indispensable for achievement in rural places. The new Canadian agriculture is becoming less and less important to the new rural economy, and indeed to the larger national economy. Economic linkages for agriculture have been redirected to urban industrial manufacturing and services. Agriculture has been decoupled from rural (Apedaile, 1991). It not only plays a less important role generally, but also in the nineties is increasingly seen to be somewhat of a nuisance as the global economy integrates. This situation is new and troublesome. Up to about 15 years ago agriculture was accorded high status as a key sector for advancing the national interest. In the best of the European Mercantilist and Physiocratic traditions dating from the time of the founding of Quebec City by de Camplain, agriculture in Canada provided the base for a strong, competitive low cost trader economy. In this century, agricultural products joined fish, forest products and minerals as a major export industry. Agriculture was a leading sector in the industrial revolution and in achieving overall productivity gains in the Canadian economy. Agriculture was the national hearthstone of individualism, thrift, social prestige and the spirit of competition. Agriculture was rural and rural was agriculture. Rural was still almost the whole economy as late as the early 1800s. Then industrialization, long distance sea transportation and the development of prairie agriculture progressed rapidly. Agriculture and mining joined forestry and fishing as important sources of raw materials for export. Agriculture helped to maintain the stable purchasing power of industrial wages. However economists foresaw a decline of rural economic activity and a tendency for rural incomes to approach the level of basic needs, the so-called \"iron law of wages.\" Technology, overlooked by these economists, has so far offset the effects of depletion of the agricultural land and water base. However pressure has mounted for some years on farm incomes and indeed the revenues of all rural resource enterprises no matter how industrialized in forestry, mining and transportation (Freshwater et al, 1991). Much of the pressure arises from global change, some from cyclical recession and trade wars, some from slack operations and some from resource depletion. Can faster technological change, harder work and better marketing shore up farm revenue in the long run? Will liberalized trade, less government and getting the prices right provide the signals necessary to achieve healthy rural communities? Can wealth be expected to accrue from better technology and greater trade volumes to those who hold rural assets? The answers are far from obvious.

Canadian agriculture and the rural economy are caught up in the process of global economic integration. This paper argues that new coalitions and contractual agreements are required to keep up with this globalization. The Uruguay Round of the GATT is an example of the effort of the international economy to keep up with global change as various coalitions renegotiate a trade agreement. Market processes at work on restructuring the rural economy should be supplemented to cope with the concomitant effects of market failure. Coalitions among rural interests, cutting across all sectors from agriculture through to forestry and services can supplement the market. Contracts can link rural and urban economies where markets fail. The window of opportunity for substantive gains from coalitions within agriculture alone is almost closed. The meaning of rural is changing rapidly. Greenness, countrysides, smallness, simplicity and remoteness still convey ruralness. However, the many different types of rural lifestyles and preferences render simplistic rural/urbam distinctions meaningless (Fuller et al, 1991). There is now a need to combine identity with one's home and community with the requirement to interact in several places at once to achieve the quality of life expected today. A global awareness of opportunities, risks, competitors and predators is now indispensable for achievement in rural places. The new Canadian agriculture is becoming less and less important to the new rural economy, and indeed to the larger national economy. Economic linkages for agriculture have been redirected to urban industrial manufacturing and services. Agriculture has been decoupled from rural (Apedaile, 1991). It not only plays a less important role generally, but also in the nineties is increasingly seen to be somewhat of a nuisance as the global economy integrates. This situation is new and troublesome. Up to about 15 years ago agriculture was accorded high status as a key sector for advancing the national interest. In the best of the European Mercantilist and Physiocratic traditions dating from the time of the founding of Quebec City by de Camplain, agriculture in Canada provided the base for a strong, competitive low cost trader economy. In this century, agricultural products joined fish, forest products and minerals as a major export industry. Agriculture was a leading sector in the industrial revolution and in achieving overall productivity gains in the Canadian economy. Agriculture was the national hearthstone of individualism, thrift, social prestige and the spirit of competition. Agriculture was rural and rural was agriculture. Rural was still almost the whole economy as late as the early 1800s. Then industrialization, long distance sea transportation and the development of prairie agriculture progressed rapidly. Agriculture and mining joined forestry and fishing as important sources of raw materials for export. Agriculture helped to maintain the stable purchasing power of industrial wages. However economists foresaw a decline of rural economic activity and a tendency for rural incomes to approach the level of basic needs, the so-called \"iron law of wages.\" Technology, overlooked by these economists, has so far offset the effects of depletion of the agricultural land and water base. However pressure has mounted for some years on farm incomes and indeed the revenues of all rural resource enterprises no matter how industrialized in forestry, mining and transportation (Freshwater et al, 1991). Much of the pressure arises from global change, some from cyclical recession and trade wars, some from slack operations and some from resource depletion. Can faster technological change, harder work and better marketing shore up farm revenue in the long run? Will liberalized trade, less government and getting the prices right provide the signals necessary to achieve healthy rural communities? Can wealth be expected to accrue from better technology and greater trade volumes to those who hold rural assets? The answers are far from obvious.

Rural business owners in Alberta are often described as independent minded entrepreneurs. The reality is that they do engage in social networking. This project focussed upon the social networks that help rural business owners access markets beyond their local area. The data were provided by the self-employed business owners who engaged in specialized agricultural and non-agricultural business operations in the geographic area defined by the East Parklands Community and Business Development Corporation headquartered at Mirror, Alberta. Six networks are examined: intimate, friendship, broker, professional, governmental and volunteer. The results suggest that owners rely upon their intimate networks for practical and emotional support. The professional networks neither encourage nor discourage the business activity, while the governmental networks are not accessed to their full advantage. Associational networks provide information to the business owners through journals, magazines and publications. Rural business owners belong to these volunteer networks, but often are not active participants. The structure of the networks suggests that the non-agricultural owners are moving away from the gemeinschaft-like strong bonds of the intimate and friendship networks. They are developing what are called \"weak-ties\" with broker and specialized networks that include trade shows, producers or similar products or through the conferences. Agricultural owners, however, are continuing their strong relationships within the friendship networks to develop and sell their product. These networks provide fewer opportunities for market expansion than do the broker-type networks.

Rural business owners in Alberta are often described as independent minded entrepreneurs. The reality is that they do engage in social networking. This project focussed upon the social networks that help rural business owners access markets beyond their local area. The data were provided by the self-employed business owners who engaged in specialized agricultural and non-agricultural business operations in the geographic area defined by the East Parklands Community and Business Development Corporation headquartered at Mirror, Alberta. Six networks are examined: intimate, friendship, broker, professional, governmental and volunteer. The results suggest that owners rely upon their intimate networks for practical and emotional support. The professional networks neither encourage nor discourage the business activity, while the governmental networks are not accessed to their full advantage. Associational networks provide information to the business owners through journals, magazines and publications. Rural business owners belong to these volunteer networks, but often are not active participants. The structure of the networks suggests that the non-agricultural owners are moving away from the gemeinschaft-like strong bonds of the intimate and friendship networks. They are developing what are called \"weak-ties\" with broker and specialized networks that include trade shows, producers or similar products or through the conferences. Agricultural owners, however, are continuing their strong relationships within the friendship networks to develop and sell their product. These networks provide fewer opportunities for market expansion than do the broker-type networks.

The problem is to explore the possible coordinates and stability conditions for equilibria between agricultural wealth and industrial wealth generation and distribution processes. Instability of the equilibria may establish the possibility of moving along trajectories to preferred positions. The behaviour of the trajectories approaching such positions, as oscillations periodic or otherwise, may be explored by studying the operation of bifurcation parameters to determine whether such positions are attractors or repellors. The problem extends to determining qualitative change in the dynamic properties of equilibrium shares of wealth under varying conditions of ecospheric sustainability. This paper is prompted by curiousity about the long future of agriculture as the ecosphere is pressured, and dependency on government supports and off-farm income is put in jeopardy by government deficits and economic recession. The problem definition and approach stem from the second generation of systems theory. A predator prey paradigm is used to model the relationship of agriculture to the rest of the economy and the ecosphere. In the event that the ecosphere continues to degrade and productivity differentials between agriculture and industry expand, could chaotic processes emerge to jeopardize the persistence of both agriculture and industry? The transfer of wealth between agriculture and industry is a central theme in development economics. The transfer takes places through shifts of value added attributable to labour, intellectual property, land and capital. Wealth is understood in Adam Smith's terms of the purchasing power for necessities, conveniences and enjoyments of human life. The term agriculture could be generalized to denote all natural resource sectors. These are usually located in rural economies. Industry refers to manufacturing and tertiary sectors, usually associated with urban economies. Debate is ongoing in development economics around sectoral investment priorities based on leading sector hypotheses, dualism and strategies for balanced and unbalanced growth. Comparative statics and market equilibrium modelling, premised on perfect competition, have driven many of the prescriptions for market structures, wages, productivity, extension, training and capital allocations between agriculture and industry. Debate over the prescriptions regularly spills over into trade friction when governments modify competitive advantages of one sector to the other through domestic support programs and border policies. Predator prey modelling appears to offer new insight into a number of persistent questions left unresolved by agricultural economists. Are there substantive economic reasons for government support of agriculture and industry? Government accompanies or directs agricultural development in many jurisdictions globally. Is their reluctance to disengage and allow competitive forces to determine development outcomes based on more than opportunistic lobbying of vested interests? What are the equilibrium and stability conditions underlying the relationships of agricultural to industrial wealth in the long run? What is the effect of ecospheric degradation on the properties of these relationships which could shed light on the sustainability question? Can human determinism influence attainment of these conditions? Are the conditions leading to and away from chaos predictable? The solution of the model presented in this paper suggests that three parametric relationships among economic variables determine the long run tendency either to impoverish or to enrich agriculture and industry. The first is that the terms of trade between agriculture and industry should at least favour agriculture to enable trajectories to move away from both axes in the long run. Second, a scaling parameter representing the productivity for agriculture relative to industry should be near to the value one. Third, the ratio of the growth rate to the rate of degradation of agricultural wealth should be greater than a threshold level of agricultural wealth determined as a composite parameter. This composite is calculated from a fixed industrial cost expressed in terms of a decline in industrial wealth in the absence of agriculture, the price index for industry, and the economic recovery rates for agriculture and industry. All possible trajectories are bounded by parametric asymptotes to the isoclines. The model is formulated mathematically so as to explore the predictability of effects of stability of equilibria on changes in agricultural wealth. This formulation provides for oscillations or \"equilibrium chases\" along trajectories. The outcomes suggest that for economies where industry buys and sells to agriculture, levels of wealth are indeed limited and that the fortunes of industry are favoured by a wealthy sustained agriculture. The alternative, subsistence agriculture, is associated with near zero levels of industrial wealth. Finally, the model demonstrates that agricultural and industrial wealth, while complementing each other in growth processes, may also rise and fall in sustained oscillation relative to each other on a periodic or near periodic basis.

The problem is to explore the possible coordinates and stability conditions for equilibria between agricultural wealth and industrial wealth generation and distribution processes. Instability of the equilibria may establish the possibility of moving along trajectories to preferred positions. The behaviour of the trajectories approaching such positions, as oscillations periodic or otherwise, may be explored by studying the operation of bifurcation parameters to determine whether such positions are attractors or repellors. The problem extends to determining qualitative change in the dynamic properties of equilibrium shares of wealth under varying conditions of ecospheric sustainability. This paper is prompted by curiousity about the long future of agriculture as the ecosphere is pressured, and dependency on government supports and off-farm income is put in jeopardy by government deficits and economic recession. The problem definition and approach stem from the second generation of systems theory. A predator prey paradigm is used to model the relationship of agriculture to the rest of the economy and the ecosphere. In the event that the ecosphere continues to degrade and productivity differentials between agriculture and industry expand, could chaotic processes emerge to jeopardize the persistence of both agriculture and industry? The transfer of wealth between agriculture and industry is a central theme in development economics. The transfer takes places through shifts of value added attributable to labour, intellectual property, land and capital. Wealth is understood in Adam Smith's terms of the purchasing power for necessities, conveniences and enjoyments of human life. The term agriculture could be generalized to denote all natural resource sectors. These are usually located in rural economies. Industry refers to manufacturing and tertiary sectors, usually associated with urban economies. Debate is ongoing in development economics around sectoral investment priorities based on leading sector hypotheses, dualism and strategies for balanced and unbalanced growth. Comparative statics and market equilibrium modelling, premised on perfect competition, have driven many of the prescriptions for market structures, wages, productivity, extension, training and capital allocations between agriculture and industry. Debate over the prescriptions regularly spills over into trade friction when governments modify competitive advantages of one sector to the other through domestic support programs and border policies. Predator prey modelling appears to offer new insight into a number of persistent questions left unresolved by agricultural economists. Are there substantive economic reasons for government support of agriculture and industry? Government accompanies or directs agricultural development in many jurisdictions globally. Is their reluctance to disengage and allow competitive forces to determine development outcomes based on more than opportunistic lobbying of vested interests? What are the equilibrium and stability conditions underlying the relationships of agricultural to industrial wealth in the long run? What is the effect of ecospheric degradation on the properties of these relationships which could shed light on the sustainability question? Can human determinism influence attainment of these conditions? Are the conditions leading to and away from chaos predictable? The solution of the model presented in this paper suggests that three parametric relationships among economic variables determine the long run tendency either to impoverish or to enrich agriculture and industry. The first is that the terms of trade between agriculture and industry should at least favour agriculture to enable trajectories to move away from both axes in the long run. Second, a scaling parameter representing the productivity for agriculture relative to industry should be near to the value one. Third, the ratio of the growth rate to the rate of degradation of agricultural wealth should be greater than a threshold level of agricultural wealth determined as a composite parameter. This composite is calculated from a fixed industrial cost expressed in terms of a decline in industrial wealth in the absence of agriculture, the price index for industry, and the economic recovery rates for agriculture and industry. All possible trajectories are bounded by parametric asymptotes to the isoclines. The model is formulated mathematically so as to explore the predictability of effects of stability of equilibria on changes in agricultural wealth. This formulation provides for oscillations or \"equilibrium chases\" along trajectories. The outcomes suggest that for economies where industry buys and sells to agriculture, levels of wealth are indeed limited and that the fortunes of industry are favoured by a wealthy sustained agriculture. The alternative, subsistence agriculture, is associated with near zero levels of industrial wealth. Finally, the model demonstrates that agricultural and industrial wealth, while complementing each other in growth processes, may also rise and fall in sustained oscillation relative to each other on a periodic or near periodic basis.