Australian Agriculture Economic Concepts And Agribusiness Flashcards
What is Economics?
Economics is a social science concerned with the way society uses its scarce resources to satisfy its objectives
What is Macroeconomics?
Macroeconomics - national economic aggregates such as level of employment, growth of income(GDP) and international trade(exports and imports)
What is Microeconomics?
Microeconomics - study of decision making behaviour of individual producers and their interaction in the markets.
What is Technical or Production Efficiency?
Relates the physical output gained to the physical input
eg. tonnes per hectare, litres per cow
What is Economic or Value Efficiency?
Relates the value of inputs to the value of output, eg. value of litre of water used for producing value of litre of wine
What is meant by Scarcity and Costs?
- The resources available to humans are limited.
- Even the wealthiest individuals have limitations.
- Our wants are infinite.
- Economic scarcity arises because of the competition for limited resources.
- Scarce resources have alternative uses.
- Each resource has a number of alternative uses, eg. if a land is used to grow a vegetable, it cannot be used in that year to grow wheat.
- Each individual makes hundreds of small economic choices.
- These small decisions sum to form an economy.
What is meant by Costs versus Prices
• What a consumer regards as cost is mostly what an economist regards as price.
• Eg. the price of petrol is $1.45 per litre, and the cost
of petrol depends on how much you buy.
• In economics there is a number of type of costs.
What is an Input Cost?
The input cost is the monetary value of producing the item.
What is an Opportunity Cost?
- The opportunity cost is the other things that may have been produced using the resources consumed.
- For example, the canned beans factory and its labour might have been used to produce wine.
- The cost of foregone alternative is called opportunity cost (i.e. in the above example, the value of wine that could be produced instead of producing the canned beans).
What is Agriculture?
• Agriculture - the cultivation of the land and the rearing of animals.
• Agriculture involves much more such as marketing,
storage, handling, selling, land care, research, government agencies , etc.
What is Agribusiness?
As the conceptualization of agriculture as a commercial activity is extended, it becomes Agribusiness.
Agribusiness is a broader concept and includes all the industries and commercial activities which contribute to the supply of food and natural fibre products to consumers and livestock.
What are the three major Agricultural Zones?
- High-rainfall zone (sheep-beef and dairy sectors)
- Wheat-sheepzoneDr.RichardCulas
- Pastoral zone [northern pastoral (beef sector) and southern pastoral (sheep-beef sector)]
What are some Australian Agricultural Industries?
Australian animal industries (dairy, beef, sheep and wool, pig, poultry, and horse)
Broadacre and dryland cropping (wheat, coarse grains, grain legumes, oil seeds and pulses, and rice)
Horticultural industry (fruits, vegetables, and floriculture)
Australian wine Industry
What is Cost Price Squeeze?
Forfarmers,pricespaid(costs)increasedmorethan the prices received (cost-price squeeze).
What are some key indicators of Structural Change?
- decreasing number and increasing size of farms (economics of scale)
- increase in productivity (technological change and increased efficiency)
- mix of products produced and their market destinations (domestic and export markets)
