AGRC2030 : Economics - Commodity - Economics Assignment Help

Internal Code : 1AJIHA

Economics Assignment Help

TASK1 Select a particular agricultural commodity such as, but not exclusive to, wheat, canola, meat sheep,beef cattle. You may also narrow the case to a particular region. Drawing on the concepts you havelearnt from the lectures as well as your own research, do the following two tasks (note that you havea choice within each task): Explore the academic literature and document and discuss any production functionresponses you review for your commodity. a) Does the production response exhibit both increasing or decreasing returns or just decreasingreturns? b) Does it exhibit negative returns? c) Is the response to changing input levels large or small over particular ranges? d) What are the implications of the production response or shape of the production function forpolicy interventions aimed at impacting input levels? e) Based on approximate input and output prices, what is the likely profit maximising level ofinput and how has the shape influenced this level?) Define a range of activities (at least two) for this enterprise (for instance, you may examinedifferent lambing times/feeding regimes for the meat sheep enterprise or different fertiliserlevels for the wheat enterprise). Review previous literature and information sources to help you develop the gross margins for these activities. In developing and presenting these grossmargins, ensure that: a. You identify some of the key parameters in the gross margin and perform somesensitivity analysis on these parameters. b. You provide an explanation of how to interpret and use these gross margins. TASK2 Discuss the main value chains and forms of price discovery in the market. Discuss the spatial, temporal and form dimensions of the market. 1) What are the main stages between production and consumption and who are the main actors? 2) How are prices and exchange determined within the market? 3) How is the industry organised across space? 4) Is there a long period between decisions on resource allocation and production and decisionson sale? How does the marketing system accommodate the time lags between productionand consumption? 5) Is the raw agricultural product or final consumer product uniform or are there many differenttypes of the product (e.g. grain size, protein content, fibre length ...)? How does themarketing system cope with different types of product?) Discuss the main forms of government intervention that have impacted on the marketing ofthe commodity and production of the enterprise. (Please note that the policy lectures areonly given in the last two weeks of lectures and so if you intend to do this option for task 2 you may need to peruse these lectures beforehand and also discuss any of the concepts with he lecturer.) 1) What types of marketing or production policies have impacted on this commodity? 2) Have the policies been specific to the commodity or to broader agriculture or have they beenbroader inter-sectoral or macroeconomic policies? 3) What has been the main intent of these policies (improve efficiency, increase or modernise production, address environment concerns ...?) 4) What has been the main impact of these policies on the commodity?)