Agricultural Economics

Agricultural economics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and fiber. Agricultural economics began as a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage, it focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil ecosystem. Throughout the 20th century the discipline expanded and the current scope of the discipline is much broader. Agricultural economics today includes a variety of applied areas, having considerable overlap with conventional economics. MPCA Hiratola has well-furnished Agriculture Economics lab that is use to provide a congenial environment for the training of highly qualified and enterprising agricultural economists, agricultural administrators and agribusiness practitioners for the purpose of training/teaching, research and extension.
Economic laboratory can be used to study the strategic economic decision making through developing a combination of economics theory, game theory, behavioural economics, laboratory experiments and research survey and also gives the updated database of national survey.

Objectives and Activities

This laboratory is used for research in following areas:

• Designing incentives to control environmental externalities (such as water pollution due to agricultural production)
• Estimating the value of non-market benefits from natural resources and environmental amenities
• To enhance the per capita income to minimize the difference between rural and urban.
• To improve nutritional standards for betterment of health.
• To discourage rural to urban migration and thereby minimize congestion & other associated problems in the society
• To study how to responsibly manage people, food, land, water and other natural resources to ensure the future of our planet.
• To reduce impact on natural ecosystems. Less runoff of chemicals into rivers and groundwater
• To provide trained personnel to meet the nation’s demand for high level professional manpower in agricultural sciences, agricultural economics, agricultural administration, agribusiness management in research, teaching, advisory work and business management.
•  To provide extension services to government agencies, multinational agencies, private companies, and private individuals in the fields of agricultural economics, agribusiness and rural development.

List of equipment in the Lab: