ECON 200 - Agricultural & Natural Resource Economics

ECON 100   (Microeconomics) or ECON 102   (Macroeconomics)

MAT 099   (Foundations for College Math, part 2) or MATH 115   (Introduction to Statistical Methods)

GEOSC 103   (Environmental Sustainability) or GEOSC 110  (Physical Geography) 

 
Co-requisite(s): None
Pre-/Co-requisite(s): None

Course Topics:
Part I: Introduction: The Organization of the agricultural production system in the United States and the world.

1. 1. The nature of agricultural production: climate and vegetation, soil structure, interactions with the forces of nature, statistics, and indicators.
   2. Types and sources of natural resources.
   3. The classification of the agents of the economy.
   4. Problems faced by economic agents in agricultural production.
   5. Agriculture and the environment
   6. Policy Issues

 Part II: The importance of agriculture in the economy of the United States.

1. Food supply and food security.
2. Provision of industrial raw materials.
3. Growth of jobs.
4. Linkages to farm machinery producers.
5. General contributions to the real GDP growth of the nation.  

Part III: Economics of Agricultural Production

1. The principles and practice of economic modeling
2. The problems facing economic agents in agriculture
3. The principles of economic reasoning
4. Agricultural production functions
5. Price and cost concepts in production
6. Revenue analyses in agricultural production
7. Technological innovations and agriculture
8. Time and uncertainty considerations in agriculture
9. The nature and organization of demand and supply in agricultural markets
10. Government intervention and efficiency of agricultural markets

Part IV: Natural Resource Economics

1. Terminologies and concepts of resource economics
2. Land use and property rights
3. Estimating the adequacy and social optimal rates of resource utilization
4. Resource management and accounting
5. Analytic approaches in resource economics
6. Efficiency and sustainability of resources
7. Natural resources and real GDP growth
8. Public policy approaches in natural resource management

Part V: Agriculture and the Environment

1. Analytic concepts in environmental economics
2. The U.S Agriculture and its impacts on the environment.
3. Environmental policy issues in the U.S

 
Course Objectives: Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Classify the agents of the macroeconomy of the United States, their linkages to the global economy, the problems faced by these agents in agricultural production, and identify lasting solutions to the problems.
2. Explore agricultural and natural resource endowments of the United States and their geographical locations.

3. Examine basic terminologies and the tools of economic analyses such as modeling, testing of hypotheses, and the communication of ideas of economic logic in written, oral, graphical, and other modes.
4. Examine factors of production and the related technological concepts in agriculture including factor-factor combinations, factor-product interactions, and product-product relationships.
5. Analyze the supply, demand, and elasticity of inputs and products, production cost and revenue concepts, and market organizational structures.
6. Explore agricultural management strategies under multiple risk and uncertainty scenarios due to production activities and various unpredictable occurrences of the forces of nature.
7. Examine advanced analytic concepts involving agricultural production and the utilization of scarce non-renewable natural resources and the impacts on the environment.
8. Explore the impacts of government regulatory policies on the efficiency of the agricultural markets.