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This course will assist you in contributing to better decision making by farmers or agricultural agencies, as well as understanding why farmers respond to policies and economic opportunities in the ways they do. This course can help you improve your skills and knowledge while also determining whether this is a subject you want to pursue further. The course contains high-quality video lectures, expert interviews, demonstrations of how to build economic models in spreadsheets, practise quizzes, and a variety of recommended and optional readings.
Syllabus :
1. Agricultural production and prices, and agriculture’s reliance on natural resources
- History of agricultural production and prices
- Agricultural products' supply
- Agricultural products' demand
- The 2007 food price crisis
- Food security
- Resource usage : Land and soils
- Water
- Nutrients
- Pesticides
- Interview - Kadambot Siddique, Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia
2. Resource and environmental challenges facing agriculture
- Water pollution
- Pesticide bans
- Dryland salinity
- Resource exhaustibility: phosphorus supply
- Resource exhaustibility: water shortages
- Resource exhaustibility: herbicide resistance
- Climate change
- Climate policy and adaptation
- Interview - Michael Robertson, CSIRO
3. The economics of agricultural inputs
- Fertiliser
- Fertiliser and Crop Yield
- Production functions
- Profit maximisation
- Building a spreadsheet to maximise profit
- Effects of price and yield changes on optimal fertiliser use
- Considering pollution in input decisions
- Flat payoff functions
- Interview - David Brown, Farmer, Burracoppin, Western Australia
4. The economics of land conservation
- Resource conservation in farming
- Benefits and costs of resource conservation over time
- Accounting for time
- Discounting
- Building a spreadsheet for discounting benefits and costs
- Case study: conservation agriculture
- Drivers of farmers’ decision-making
- Interview - Mike McFarlane, farmer, Doodlakine, Western Australia
- Interview - Greg Shea, WA Department of Agriculture and Food
5. The economics of agri-environmental projects
- Environmental projects in agriculture
- Extending economics beyond the farm
- Characteristics of environmental projects
- Benefit: Cost Analysis
- Benefit: Cost Ratio
- The Gippsland Lakes
- A helpful tool: INFFER
- Interview - Marit Kragt, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia
6. Government policies in agriculture
- Government policies in agriculture
- Policies to support agricultural production
- Policies for environmental protection in agriculture
- Agricultural policy problems: Price support
- Agricultural policy problems: Biofuels
- Justifications for agricultural policy
- Interview - Ross Kingwell, Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre
