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BPBE 272 Week 3 Assignment

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I have learned many very important skills from BPBE 272 that I value in my educational career as well as in my future endeavours. Yes, I learned all of the key elements of economics that makes it so important in the world today, but most importantly I learned how to apply all of the economic skills BPBE 272 gave me. This class gifted me with the ability to evaluate the world around me and within my career in an economic mind set. This class really enforced a life long understanding of agricultural economics through the use of teaching styles that require us not to memorize, but to actually learn and hold the information. Throughout, I will explain:
• The main things I learned in this class
• What it means to me to have learned this information …show more content…

In the first week of classes we learned seven economic principles that would later be reinforced with examples in the class along with providing our own examples and analysis of the concepts in our own written work and debates about real world issues and events. We first talked about how incentives matter. In agriculture, and many other business sectors, incentives are very important and come in many forms such as subsidies or tax breaks from the government. It was also very important to learn about the shortages and surpluses that could amount from such incentives. For example, if the government were to give farmers prices above equilibrium, farmers would then be able to over produce above the demand levels. This is not to say that the government can’t sometimes improve the market outcomes. If a market failure is present and the government interferes, it would result in a positive market outcome. Next we discussed the importance of trade-offs and the opportunity costs behind those trade-offs. We make our trade-offs among three pillars of values: social/cultural, environmental, and economics and only when all three are balanced are we completely sustainable. In agriculture, trade-offs and opportunity costs are faced daily, and decisions should be made according to what is most sustainable now, and in the future. If a farmer decides to drain a wetland for more crop space to produce more (economic), the opportunity cost is the ecosystem being destroyed (environmental). Another example is if a farmer decides to farm organically, the opportunity cost is the increased yields of non-organic farming practices. Next I learned that rational people think at the margin. An example of this within agriculture is that a farmer does not think that he will hire five people to run two tractors, he thinks at the margin, hires two people to do the job, and therefore profits from that decision. I learned that markets are a good way

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