At 10:52 AM 2/2/01 -0500, K Feete wrote:
>Most farmland now is being bought by developers, not farmers, so any real
>estate statistics are suspicous.
Why does the person buying the land make the price suspicious?
>and most of the farmers around here are
>going out of business because their land is no longer productive.
Is the land no longer productive because yields have gone down? Or is it
because the price of commodity foodstuffs has gone down?
> The yield has gone up, but the
>profit margin remains the same... if not smaller. I'm not an expert on
>crop farming, but I'm betting it's the same deal there.
Wasn't somebody just arguing to me (Jeroen? you?) that when costs go down,
the only thing that increases is profits? i.e. prices never go down with
costs?
What you write above, however, is exactly what *I* would predict. As
yield goes up, the cost per unit has gone down . As more of the food is
produced, the increased supply causes price to go down, and profits thus
remain at the equilibrium level.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today:
to make our country more just and generous; to affirm the dignity of
our lives and every life." - George W. Bush Inaugural Address 1/20/01
