Class Number: AEDECON 4597: Food, Population, and the Environment
Class DescriptionÂ
This course taught about the connections between food supply, population size, and humanity’s impact on the environment. It also explored topics like population growth models, the impact of different policies on food security and the environment, and the way the global market can impact developing countries. We also learned different models of economic growth and how they relate to population growth.
Class Reflection
In this class, I learned a lot about economics, population growth, food security, and the environment. I found it very interesting how interconnected they all were and how much they connected to other parts of society as well.
For example, the availability of food will affect how much the population is able to grow. If food is abundant, then people will likely reproduce more, but then if the population booms that will affect the availability of food since there will be more people consuming the same amount of resources. If resources are abundant, then the population will move away from having primarily agricultural jobs and diversify trade. This can lead to people having time to innovate new technologies, which in turn make farming more efficient and resources even more available.
I also found it very interesting when we learned about markets. Markets are competitive when they meet a number of criteria, including absolute transparency (the buyer should not be unaware of any information about the product), perfect competition (no monopolies), and a single price for a product. When sellers try to maximize profit beyond reason instead of finding the sweet spot between value for the buyer and value for the seller, it can lead to market failure. Similarly, when you have a few companies with all of the financial power preventing new ventures from joining the market, it can lead to market failure. This was interesting to me because you can kind of see that sort of thing happening in real time right now with megacorporations like Disney and Coca Cola.
I think what this class really drove home was that there are really no isolated occurrences in a society. You can’t look at an issue only in terms of economics or the environment or food security because they are all in a system and all affect each other. If you want to really understand what is going on in the world, you need to look at all of the parts of the system with all of the nuance that entails in order to have the most accurate view. This is important to understand because sometimes policy decisions are made that do not account for enough factors – especially in America the focus tends to be almost entirely on economics.