Agricultural Subsidies and The Impact of Corn

Week 3 Discussions and Required Resources

Assignment: This is a two-part assignment. Each part must be at least 200 words unless otherwise noted. Please read all attachments and follow ALL instructions.

To receive full credit you must include at least 2 citations of scholarly support to your answers for each discussion post (i.e. Discussion One – 2 citations, Discussion Two – 2 citations).  Citations should be within your post and include (Author, year, page number) if you are using a quote, page number is not required if you are paraphrasing.  Just listing references and not using them in your post does not count as a citation or support.  You can use your textbook as scholarly support and remember to include a reference for the support cited.  

Part 1: Agricultural Subsidies

Technology has been very important to agricultural markets for the United States and has made it a very large food-producing nation in the world. When looking at the money that the US government spends on agricultural markets with the subsidies that they provide, do you think there could be other options for the money spent? How can you measure the inefficiency of the subsidies that are provided in the market? 

Part 2: The Impact of Corn

Corn is a valuable commodity in our global economy. Corn can be used as multiple inputs and as a final good. One of the inputs that corn is used for is the production of ethanol, which is used in the production of gasoline. As you know, agricultural markets are very important to the United States economy. But, what is going to occur in the market for corn if more is needed for the production of ethanol rather than the other functions of corn? In your answer, evaluate the role of opportunity cost and analyze each stakeholder involved in the production of corn.

Required Resources

Text

Tietenberg, T., & Lewis, L. (2012). Environmental and natural resource economics (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Addison-Wesley

· Chapter 10: A Locationally Fixed, Multipurpose Resource: Land

· Chapter 11: Reproducible Private-Property Resources: Agriculture and Food Security

· Chapter 12: Storable, Renewable Resources: Forests

· Chapter 13: Common-Pool Resources: Fisheries and Other Commercially Valuable Species

Recommended Resource

Article

Angelsen, A. (2010). Policies for reduced deforestation and their impact on agricultural production . PNAS. Retrieved from