33
votes
Accepted
Why hasn't innovation in the agricultural industry led to a significant reduction in food prices?
Why hasn't innovation in the agricultural industry led to a significant reduction in food prices?
Mostly (present couple of years excluded) this is because of inflation. Inflation means money loses ...
- 57.7k
7
votes
Why does anyone prepare their own food?
The weights used in the U.S. CPI (from 2016) are available here: link to BLS weights. Note that these weights are based on consumption data, so that they are meant to align with actual spending ...
- 9,907
5
votes
Why hasn't innovation in the agricultural industry led to a significant reduction in food prices?
The data in 1muflon1's answer of the inflation adjusted food prices seems implausible: The perceived difference to me is much greater, anecdotally, than the <20% reduction the data shows for food ...
5
votes
Accepted
Why do grains cost so much more than flour?
The following is a partial explanation.
There are valuable by-products from the milling of wheat: bran and wheat germ (see here). These by-products typically sell for a much higher price per weight ...
- 8,584
5
votes
What arguments are there in favor of national food self-sufficiency?
Have there been any economists who have argued in favor of national
food self-sufficiency and what are some of their arguments?
I am not knowledgeable of literature in that direction, but some of ...
- 1,807
4
votes
Accepted
Is it more costly to raise cattle for beef or raise fish in aquacultures?
Cost of production is somewhat difficult to pin down, since much of that information is private. However, consumer costs are widely available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954450/
I ...
- 3,477
4
votes
Why did coronavirus cause a food shortage?
This question is too open-ended, as it does not even specify a country. There are a number of issues that have shown up. These comments are based on my reading of news stories, and arguably not ...
- 9,907
4
votes
Accepted
How could you partition Household Food Expenditures into Producing Industries?
You should try to avoid mixing data sets unless you have a good way to bridge them. There are very precise methodologies used to construct each data set and mixing them can lead to nonobvious problems....
- 9,355
3
votes
Accepted
How to make a country rich with no ground resources?
How to make a country rich with no ground resources?
Country can develop and achieve high income country status (I assume that's what you mean by being rich), without much if any natural resources. ...
- 57.7k
3
votes
What arguments are there in favor of national food self-sufficiency?
The main argument for food self-sufficiency---endorsed by Bush in the quote you have---is that being dependant on other countries for food reduces the power a country can hope to wield on an ...
- 63
2
votes
What arguments are there in favor of national food self-sufficiency?
I recognize that I cannot prove a negative and claim "no economists want this", but I will caution that there will be few economists with an interest in food independence (being a food autarky) ...
- 3,477
1
vote
Why hasn't innovation in the agricultural industry led to a significant reduction in food prices?
In my other answer I listed reasons why food appears cheaper than it nominally is. But the fact that the prices didn't drop more despite of huge advances in mechanization still puzzled me. Here is a ...
1
vote
Why do grains cost so much more than flour?
Few things come to my mind are product differentiation, price discrimination, economies of scale, vertical integration, and maybe regulations.
I feel because grain is more organic in a sense than ...
- 977
1
vote
Accepted
In-ovo chick sexing vs. unemployment
This technology would be implemented on a large scale regardless of any countries law mandating it's use. Firms would save a lot of resources if they could get rid of eggs at the 4-20 day mark rather ...
- 161
1
vote
Depreciation of local currency and its effect on prices
I think you're getting tripped up by notation. Instead of LOC/\$, write \$/LOC, since international trade is most likely to take place using $USD as an intermediary currency.
Here's an example:
...
- 1,806
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