Economics of Food and
Agriculture (Third edition, 2014)
David L. Debertin
This is a
heavily-edited version of an introductory agricultural economics text book
“Economics of Food and Agriculture” that was originally published by Kendall
Hunt, in 1990 but has long been out of print.
The current version consists of 620 color pdf
slide set constituting material for a complete introductory (100-level course)
in agricultural economics. All the color
slides are contained in an 11 MB pdf file (similar in
size to a tablet or iPad application).
The file is
ideally suited for downloading by tech-savvy beginning undergraduate
agricultural economics student to a variety of devices. I have been
experimenting with 7-inch Android tablets, but the file should work equally
well on an iPad or perhaps even a smart phone. Obviously the file can also be downloaded to
a laptop or desktop computer or any other device that has a pdf
reader on it. By downloading the file students suddenly have a complete
620-slide beginning agricultural economics course on whatever device they
prefer to use.
The material can also be use by instructors for classroom
presentations employing a computer projector. I envision a modern agricultural
economics classroom of students with devices of various types in the class
having already downloaded same material on the device as what appears
on-screen. The slides contain much of the detailed core material, but there is
still plenty of space for instructors to do their own things in conjunction
with the slides.
There are two files,
one containing 620 color pdf slides in 17 chapters. A
second file handout file contains the same slides set up for printing on a
black-and-white printer, two-to-a-page.
Both of the files are
free downloads at http://ageconsearch.umn.edu
The “handle” to get
directly to the files is http://purl.umn.edu/162696 All of this is FREE, and EVERY beginning student in
agricultural economics no matter where they are should download the files to
the device of their choice!
Background on the revision and updates
to the material:
The 1990 versions of this book relied heavily
on graphs that constructed by the author using secondary data. Now there are
many other sources, most notably the graphs contained in the USDA ERS chart
gallery. In updating this version to the present, I retained a few of the
graphs that were in the original version, but then located graphs created by
the USDA ERS in their chart gallery in order to add to and supplement the
original information. These slides were originally constructed employing
Harvard Graphics routines. At that point in computing history, clip art as
opposed to photographs was being used extensively. By retaining some of the quirky clip art from
the original version, I have also retained some of the look and feel of the
original edition. It turns out that these slides, with big fonts and quirky
clip-art, look particularly neat on a small hand-held device.
Color is important on
these slides, which were originally used for GEN 101 taught using these slides
by me and several others in the UK ag.
econ Department. Students will want to download the
color file to their laptops or tablet devices. For the most part, the
black-and-white handout looks fine when printed, but for a few of the graphs,
the color causes lines or other information to be washed out or a graph or map
becomes hard to read. Students should refer back to the color version on their
computing devices.
Links for Powerpoint
slides for individual chapters for instructors
All of the 600+
slides contained in the book are available to instructors as free downloads.
The general Web address for downloading these is http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch”X”.ppt
where “X” is the specific one- or two-digit chapter number. Hence, the Powerpoint for chapter 10 can be downloaded at the Web
Address http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch10.ppt
Hot Links for all the
chapters as individual Powerpoints are below
Chapter 1:
Introduction http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch1.ppt
Chapter 2: The
Structure of Agriculture http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch2.ppt
Chapter 3: Demand and
Supply http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch3.ppt
Chapter 4:
Introduction to Elasticities http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch4.ppt
Chapter 5: Utility Analysis http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch5.ppt
Chapter 6:
Agricultural Production Economics http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch6.ppt
Chapter 7: Producer Cost http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch7.ppt
Chapter 8: Production
with Two Inputs or Outputs
http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch8.ppt
Chapter 9:
Alternative models of Competition http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch9.ppt
Chapter 10:
Agricultural Marketing
http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch10.ppt
Chapter 11: Credit in
Agriculture http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch11.ppt
Chapter 12: Public
Policy http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch12.ppt
Chapter 13: Economics
of Resources http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch13.ppt
Chapter 14: Trade in
Agricultural Goods http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch14.ppt
Chapter 15: Economic
Systems in Other Countries
http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch15.ppt
Chapter 16: World
Food http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch16.ppt
Chapter 17: Rural
Economic Development http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/efa/ch17.ppt
These Powerpoint figures are backward compatible and should work
on early Windows based machines at least as far back as those running Office
97.
The 3-part, 3-level Plan:
These slides
represent the introductory or first-level agricultural economics designed for
beginning students who have not yet taken calculus and have only limited
experience working with computerized spreadsheets. Chapters 3-9 of the introductory
slides contain the sections with the core micro theory, Demand and Supply,
Elasticities, Utility Analysis, Production Economics, Cost, and Alternative
Models of Market Competition.
The next
step from a curriculum perspective is to move to intermediate or upper-division
material. The book and course materials for the
upper-division version (junior-senior level) is what Applied Microeconomics: Consumption,
Production and Markets is all about.
This book
follows the exact same content format as the beginning level slides above. Two
new Assumptions: 1. Students have all now have been exposed to differential
calculus, and 2. Students are now much more computer-literate especially with
respect to being able to use spreadsheets to make up tables of calculations and
to draw graphs. The problems themselves should be quite familiar to students,
because they have already seen a lot of them in the introductory slide set
(Chapters 3-9) above.
This is a
microeconomic theory book designed for upper-division undergraduate students in
economics and agricultural economics. This
intermediate-level book is available electronically also as a free download at
Amazon markets bound print copies of the book at amazon.com at a nominal price (about $25) for classroom
use.
The book can also be ordered through college
bookstores using the following ISBN numbers:
ISBN‐13: 978‐1475244342
ISBN-10: 1475244347
You could print the book
directly from the free e-download, but Amazon does such a nice job of binding
and printing the book in an easy-to-put-in-a-backpack format, if I were an
instructor I would simply order the bound copies. I have experimented with
simply downloading this as a pdf e-book. The problem
that I get into is that would like to be able to flip pages around to compare
graphs directly with table numbers, and also look at math steps that occurred a
few pages ago, and I really believe that the print copy is still extremely
important here in the learning process.
Everything in the book is tied
back to what was contained in chapters 3-9 of the introductory slides, but
everything also becomes more quantitative with the combination of calculus and
spreadsheets applied. The transition should be very smooth from introductory to
intermediate level.
Part 3 goes into the
introductory graduate level, with emphasis on production economics. Agricultural Production Economics (Second Edition, Amazon Createspace 2012) is a revised edition of the Textbook Agricultural Production Economics
published by Macmillan in 1986 (ISBN 0-02-328060-3). This is intended primarily
for adoption at the beginning graduate level although a few institutions are
using this also at the upper-division undergraduate level.
The beauty of the linkage at the three levels is that
Agricultural Production Economics uses a lot of the same or closely-related
numerical examples that students who have used Applied Economics will have
already seen at the upper-division undergraduate level. There is a real advantage to having the same
author writing the materials at all different levels. Agricultural
Production Economics is available as a FREE
e-download at http://purl.umn.edu/158319
Amazon also has bound
print copies of the book at amazon.com at a nominal
price (about $19) for classroom use. Again, students can download the file but
I recommend the paper copy for serious study.
The 428 pp. book can also be ordered through college
bookstores using the following ISBN numbers:
ISBN-13
978-1469960647
ISBN-10
1469960648
A companion
100-page color book Agricultural Production Economics (The Art of Production
Theory) is also a free pdf download at http://purl.umn.edu/158320
For
instructors who want a color Powerpoint version of
all of these figures from Agricultural Production Economics for display in the
classroom, this link provides a free electronic download to all of them in ppt format
http://www.uky.edu/~deberti/colorbookppt.ppt
A bound 100-pp. print copy is also
available on amazon.com at a nominal cost (about $25,
probably cheaper than buying color toner to print the file). Here is the Amazon
link:
The companion book can also be ordered through
bookstores under the following ISBN numbers:
ISBN- 13:
978-1470129262
ISBN- 10: 1470129264
Concluding Comments
Collectively, this is a lot of material, all designed to be integrated
work seamlessly in both an undergraduate from start to finish and the beginning
graduate level curriculum. The entire set of materials needs to be seen as core
curriculum in an agricultural economics program and as a single large set of
material as opposed to three sets of materials to be used separately rather
than together.
I am interested in integrating what beginning students already know about
using tablet and smart phones into basic agricultural economics instruction.
Further, I think my intermediate-level content is going to be much more
meaningful to students if they have already been studying the beginning slides
on their devices at the introductory level. I am confident in the quality of
the materials and their appropriateness for instruction at each level.