Video - Course introduction

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From the course by University of Western Australia

Agriculture, Economics and Nature

136 оценки

University of Western Australia

Agriculture, Economics and Nature

136 оценки

Sound economic thinking is crucial for farmers because they depend on good economic decision making to survive. Governments depend on economic information to make good policy decisions on behalf of the community. This course will help you to contribute to better decision making by farmers, or by agencies servicing agriculture, and it will help you to understand why farmers respond to policies and economic opportunities in the ways they do. You can use this course to improve your skills and knowledge, and to assess whether this is a subject that you'd like to study further. The course includes high-quality video lectures, interviews with experts, demonstrations of how to build economic models in spreadsheets, practice quizzes, and a range of recommended readings and optional readings. Assessment is by a final exam. The key economic principles that we’ll learn about can help us understand changes that have occurred in agriculture, and support improved decision making about things like agricultural production methods, agricultural input levels, resource conservation, and the balance between agricultural production and its environmental impacts. There are literally thousands of agricultural economists around the world who work on these issues, so there is a wealth of knowledge to draw on for the course. Watch a brief video about our course here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_IeYGpeqV8

From the lesson

Agricultural production and prices, and agriculture’s reliance on natural resources

Week 1 provides a history of agricultural production and prices, an examination into the reasons behind changes in production and prices, and discussions of the 2007 global food crisis and agriculture’s usage of resources.

Video - Course introduction5:34

Meet the Instructors

Professor David Pannell, BSc(Agric), BEc, PhD
Head of School of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Western Australia
Jacob Hawkins, BA(Biol), MESM, PhD
School of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Western Australia

[GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm David Pannell from the University

of Western Australia.

Welcome to this course, titled Agriculture, Economics,

and Nature.

I hope you'll enjoy learning about these issues with me

over the next six weeks.

The course, of course, is about agriculture,

including agricultural production and the interaction

between agriculture and the environment.

We'll be tackling these issues from an economic perspective,

and I hope you'll find that economics helps

to enrich our understanding of what's happening

and what should happen in agriculture

and environmental management.

We'll be looking at a wide range of questions,

including, why prices for some agricultural products

fallen so dramatically for more than 100 years?

How have farmers stayed in business

despite those price falls?

What are some of the key challenges that

confront agriculture currently and in coming years?

How have farmers approached decision-making

about agricultural inputs such as fertilizers,

and how should they do so?

What are the aims of existing government policies

for agriculture, and how can they be improved?

And how can we best protect the environment

from the negative impacts of agricultural production?

The course structuring is a six-week course,

and each week there will be a different theme,

and on each theme there will be 8 to 10 brief videos, including

lectures, interviews, demonstrations, and case

studies.

There will be reading tasks each week, a brief quiz each week

to make sure you've understood the material, and a final exam.

In week one, we'll talk about the agricultural production

and prices, and agriculture's reliance on natural resources.

So that will include looking at the history

of agricultural production and prices,

explaining the changes that have occurred in production

and prices over time, a look at the 2007 global food crisis,

and an examination of agriculture's usage

of resources of different types-- land, water, nutrients,

and pesticides.

In week two, we'll cover the resource

and environmental challenges facing agriculture, including

water availability, the idea of peak phosphorus,

herbicide resistance, and climate change.

Week three is about the economics

of agricultural inputs.

We'll start by examining the relationship between inputs

and outputs, and then we'll show how

to identify the optimal level of an input--

the one that maximizes a farmer's profits.

And then we'll repeat that, but in a situation

where an input causes pollution-- what should

that do to optimal input levels?

And we'll finish by looking at flat payoff functions, which

has some important implications for how farmers have

flexibility in their choice of input levels.

Week four covers the economics of land conservation,

and the topics that week will include evaluation

of land conservation practices, how

to weigh up benefits and costs correctly,

how to consider the non-economic factors,

and we'll illustrate it with a case

study of conservation agriculture.

Week five is about the economics of agri-environmental projects.

And in that week, we'll extend the economics

beyond the farm guide to include issues

that concern the broader community.

We'll look at some of the characteristics

of typical agri-environmental projects,

and I'll give you an introduction

to benefit cost analysis, and we'll illustrate these issues

with a case study from Australia at looking the Gibbs Lands

Lakes.

And finally in week six, we'll look at agricultural policies.

We'll examine policies that support agriculture,

and policies that protect the rural environment.

We'll look at a couple of segments

on problems with agricultural policies,

including problems that can arise

from trying to provide support with higher prices,

and biofuels, as illustrations of some

of the problems that can occur.

And we'll finish that week by looking

at the need for justification for agricultural policy

and what justifications there might

be for different types of agricultural policy.

In weeks three and four, I'll try and help

you build some spreadsheet skills

by providing a demonstration of how to build spreadsheets that

tackle two of the economic issues

that we address-- optimizing input levels,

and discounting to compare benefits and costs that

occur at different times.

Each week, we'll include at least one interview

with an expert related to the topic covered in that week.

And our experts will include farmers,

agricultural scientists, agricultural economists,

and an agricultural advisor.

So make the most of the course.

I'm sure you'll find that you get the most out of it

if you put more into it.

So I think you should do the assigned reading,

try and participate in the forums,

and do the quizzes each week.

So that's it.

Welcome to the course.

It's time to get started.

[GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING]

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