Banana Land: Blood, Bullets, and Poison

Questions to answer about the documentary:

1. What type of Banana is produced? (1 point)

2. Why is there only one type of Banana made? (1 point)

3. What is the price of banana vs. the price of apples? (1 point)

4. What is the consumption of bananas in the United States and why is it so high? (1 point)

5. Explain the importance of the Boston Fruit Company and the United Fruit Company (UFC) (2 points)

6. What was the Green Revolution? (3 points)

7. What is monocultural practice? (3 points)

8. What was the importance of DBCP and other chemicals included in the film? (5 points)

9. What were the labor issues talked about in the film? (5 points)

10. Write 3 multiple choice question and provide an answer (3 points)

Food Inc.

Link to the movie: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3q2mz7

Questions to answer about the documentary:

1. What imagery is used to sell food in America during the twenty-first century?

2. How many different products does the average American supermarket sell?

3. According to this film, how would one characterize the typical producer of food in America?

4. What commercial development led to the emergence of the industrial food system?

5. What role did McDonald’s Restaurants play in this trend in food production?

6. In 1970 what percentage of the meat packing industry was dominated by the five largest packers?

7. What is the percentage today controlled by the four largest meat packers?

8. What was Tyson’s response to the film makers visiting the buildings where chickens are housed?

9. What were conditions like in the henhouse in the one chicken farm that allowed filming?

10. What role do antibiotics play in the mass production of chickens

11. How do large companies such as Tysons or Perdue keep their independent producers under control?

12. What percentage of America’s farmland is used to produce corn?

13. How does government policy regarding corn produce that percentage of land use?

14. How do corn product enter into the production of food? What is the primary corn product used?

15. How much meat does the average American eat each year?

16. Why is corn used in the feeding of dairy cows? What biological problem does that produce? Why?

17. Why does e. coli (escherichia coli) bacteria form in the stomachs of dairy cows?

18. What is the danger of e. coli? Explain the process?

19. How do large companies influence the federal agencies that are supposed to regulate them?

20. How many food safety inspections did the FDA conduct in 1972? How many in 2006?

21. How many slaughterhouses were there in the U.S. during the 1970s? How many are there now?

22. Who is Barbara Kowalcyk? Why is she on Capitol Hill? What event resulted in this activity?

23. Why doesn’t the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shut down unsanitary food processors?

24. What is the food industry’s usual response to pressures to produce safer foods?

25. Why are unhealthful foods often cheaper than healthy foods?

26. What is the best economic predictor of obesity according to this film?

27. What three tastes does the food industry focus upon?

28. What ratio of adult Americans will develop Type 2 Diabetes? What is the rate among minorities?

29. What kind of worker does the largest slaughterhouse in America primarily employ? Why?

30. How do these workers know that the slaughterhouses are hiring their category of employee?

31. Why are meat packing workers being arrested? Why are their employers not being arrested?

32. How many people can the average farmer feed today? What was the ratio 110 years ago?

33. What happened that has enabled large corporations to patent the basic elements of biological life?

34. What percentage of soy bean producers use Monsanto’s patented seed?

35. What was that percentage twelve years earlier?

36. What happens to the farmer who uses a patented seed without the patent holders’ permission?

37. How do the patent holders find out a farmer is using their seeds without authorization?

38. How do farmers unintentially use patented seeds? What is the reaction of the patent holder to this?

39. How does the food industry influence both the Supreme Court and presidential administrations?

40. Why do industry advocates oppose labeling packaged products with regards to food processing?

41. What have food producers done to silence critics? What happened to Oprah Winfrey?

43. What brought an end to the use of synthetic growth hormones in the meat industrt?

44. Why do we need changes at the level of governmental policy regarding the food industry?

45. How can the American people respond to the practices of the food industry?

Excellent chapter on Taxes and Subsidies

https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/uvicecon103/chapter/4-6-taxes/

Assignments and web info for Food and Wine Economics Spring 2019

1. Explain the supply and demand diagram.

a. What assumptions are needed in order to apply this model?

b. Give an example using food and wine to create a supply and demand diagram. You should find a news paper article that you can use for this and connect it to the model. Which curve shifts and in which direction? What are the predictions on the price and quantity?

2. Explain price elasticity of demand. Find a real-world example that show this concept using food and wine theme. You should clearly cite your source and briefly explain the conclusions.

3. Explain price elasticity of supply. Find a real-world example that show this concept using food and wine theme. You should clearly cite your source and briefly explain the conclusions.

4. Explain income elasticity. Find a real-world example that show this concept using food and wine theme. You should clearly cite your source and briefly explain the conclusions.

5. Explain cross-price elasticity. Find a real-world example that show this concept using food and wine theme. You should clearly cite your source and briefly explain the conclusions.

6. Use welfare economics to explain the impact of taxes and provide an example from food economics.

7. Use welfare economics to explain the impact of subsidies and provide an example from food economics.

8. Use welfare economics to explain international trade, gains from trade and the impact of trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas and provide an example from food economics.

9. Use welfare economics to explain the impact of monopolies and provide an example from food economics.

Here are some great places to fine real-world applications and information about the topics we are discussing in this class:

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/

Use OW library to access databases below – click on “Articles, Data, & more (Databases A-Z):

http://libguides.oldwestbury.edu/welcome

· NBER working papers

· EconLit

· Jstor