Deck 8: Economic Choices and Outcomes for Agriculture, Natural Resources, and the Environment

Question 1

A ________ is a landowner's decision to legally and permanently pledge his/her valuable natural asset (such as land) to a single use (agriculture)

A) Conservation Reserve Program
B) Conservation Stewardship Program
C) Environmental Quality Incentive Program
D) Conservation Easement
E) allocatively-efficient economic system.

Answer 1

D
Explanation:A Conservation Easement is a landowner's decision to legally and permanently pledge his/her valuable natural asset (such as land) to a single use (agriculture)

Question 2

Enhanced water-use efficiency and changes in regional cropping patterns are largely responsible for an increase in the acre-feet of water applied on irrigated acres as the number of western-US irrigated acres increased by 2.1 million.

Answer 2

False
Explanation:Enhanced water-use efficiency and changes in regional cropping patterns are largely responsible for a decrease in the acre-feet of water applied on irrigated acres as the number of western-US irrigated acres increased by 2.1 million.

Question 3

Basic arithmetic says that the planet's fresh water supply is less than 1% of the earth's total water availabiility

Answer 3

True
Explanation:Basic arithmetic says that the planet's fresh water supply is 0.65% of the earth's total water availabiility

Question 4

In 19th-Century England, the scenario of the ___________ is a situation where pasture-land is not owned by any one cattle-grazer, but the land is accessible by all area producers.

A) the pure public good hypothesis
B) the option demand hypothesis
C) weak substitutability hypothesis
D) weak sustainabilty hypothesis
E) tragedy of the commons

Question 5

The _________ allows producers to voluntarily enroll up to 24 M-acres of authorized and qualified farmland; this program sets-up 10-or-15 year contracts to establish native prairie, pollinator-meadow acreages and/or wildlife habitat on lands that are highly-erodible, marginal pasture, or ecologically significant grasslands or wetlands

A) Environmental Quality Incentive Program
B) Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
C) Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
D) Conservation Reserve and Enhancement Program (CREP)
E) Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP)

Question 6

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is a national USDA Working Lands conservation program that offers cost sharing opportuniites to producers for conservation practices tailored to county-level or regional resource projects.

Question 7

A 2015 OECD Study emphasizes that _____ likely represents the most severe threat to the stability of global and local ecosystems. Irreversible and undesirable changes are predicted.

A) the weak sustainabilty hypothesis
B) the tragedy of the commons
C) a pure public good
D) climate change
E) a conservation easement

Question 8

The reasons for the large expenditures and the wide range of federal renewable energy programs in the early- to mid-2000's include:

A) the promotion of US energy independence.
B) generating increased demand for US farm products.
C) facilitating reduced Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.
D) accelerating US Imports of foreign-produced petroleum-based products.
E) all of answers 'A', 'B' and 'C'.

Question 9

In 2011, the US Envronmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), under President Obama's direction, created a proposal to administratively determine which _____________ are, and are not, covered under the 1972 Clean Water Act's (CWA's) regulations.

A) privately-owned ditches
B) Waters of the US (WOTUS)
C) ponds and raceways
D) publicly-owned ditches
E) puddles and raindrops

Question 10

Currently, US agriculture is estimated to produce 12 % of all US GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions while only absorbing 6% of US greenhouse gases. A USDA strategic objective is to emphasize programs that decrease agriculture's GHG absorptive capacity while increasing agriculture's GHG emissions.

Question 11

A November 2015 ERS Report cited previous studies indicating that US farm and ranch managers will be resilient in adjusting their operations to new climate-changed growing conditions.

Question 12

US soybean, corn and cotton producers have adopted _________because of increased yields, reduced pesticide applications and costs, and improved time management.

A) organic certification
B) the Agricultural Management Assistance (AMA) program
C) Genetically-Engineered (GE) varieties
D) the Conservation Easement
E) the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)

Question 13

The _________ is a Working Lands conservation program that encourages the continuation and improvement of producers' existing conservation systems. A producer must "pre-qualify" to be a participant.

A) Conservation Reserve and Enhancement Program (CREP)
B) Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP)
C) Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
D) Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
E) Conservation Easement

Question 14

A reversible change in land use is a scenario where prime farmland is reallocated to build an industrial park or housing complex, and it cannot return to agricultural use.

Question 15

The ______ is a grim global prediction of malnutrition, famine and social unrest because gains in agricultural output fail to keep pace with an exponential expansion of human food demands.

A) weak substitutability hypothesis
B) Safe Minimum Standard hypothesis
C) Malthusian Calculus
D) intertemporal production function
E) intetemporal utility function

Question 16

________________describes the situation where consumers are "willing and able to pay" to protect wildlife habitat, or save endangered species, or safeguard prime agricultural land for future generations to experience and enjoy.

A) Option Demand
B) An Initial intertemporal endowment position
C) The intertemporal production function
D) A market externality
E) A pure public good

Question 17

In scenarios where current decisions have an influence on future output, ____________means that a manager can easily substitute one resource input for another within a production function.

A) A market externality
B) Option Demand
C) Strong Sustainability
D) Malthusian Calculus
E) Weak Sustainability

Question 18

As defined within economic theory, if intertemporal resource allocation choices are best classified as a 'strong sustainability' scenario, then they are also likely to have weak (inelastic) substitutability.

Question 19

When we properly employ the intertemporal economic model of resource allocation, which is a choice-theory that includes intertemporal household production, intertemporal household consumption and a market interest rate, then we typically predict households tend to use-up or exhaust most of their resources in the present time period, rather than balancing current and future resource allocations.

Question 20

In the intertemporal economic model of resource allocation, when an non-internalized externality causes the Marginal Private Cost of current consumption to be less than the corresponding Marginal Social Cost of current consumption, then rational households are predicted to

A) consume the economically efficient quantity of current output.
B) consume less than the economically efficient quantity of current output.
C) consume more than the economically efficient quantity of current output.
D) randomly respond to the altered private incentive; unrpredictably using more or less than the economically efficient amount of current output.
E) none of the above.

Question 21

The _____________ guideline is a decision-making tool that aims to avoid costly irreversible changes in ecosystem support capacity while providing a buffer for renewable resources to re-generate their life-supporting potentials.

A) Conservation Easement
B) Option Demand
C) Strong Sustainability
D) Safe Minimum Standard
E) Malthusian Calculus

Question 22

A stock value is the total value or amount of a resource at one point in time. A flow value indicates a variable measured per unit time.

Question 23

The ________ is a team effort of both federal and state conservation programs; this program is focused on solving agriculturally-related environmental problems.

A) Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP)
B) Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
C) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)
D) Conservation Reserve Program
E) Conservation Reserve and Enhancement Program (CREP)

Question 24

The US and other economies have already reached ecnomically efficient levels for generating beneficial "resource flows" that influence the "stock condition" of our environment; the only task left is to maintain these stock values that are currenlty consistent with long term sustainability.