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From 2013.igem.org

Food Economics

Relationship of our Project to the Price of Meat

Wholesale price of meat in U.S. dollars. The data is from 2013. The prices for pork, beef, poultry, and salmon came from index Mundi, tuna prices came from the Seafood Connection, swordfish prices came from The Seafood Source, and the price of cod came from Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

With the exception of fish, punitive data shows that an increase in the efficiency in the stomach of an organism will increase the overall size of the organism. This essentially would cause a higher quantity yield of usable meat. Our project, if applied to poultry, cattle, and the like, would do just this, thus causing the wholesale price of meat to be lowered significantly.

Relationship of our Project to the Price of Grains

Figure 3: The price per metric ton of the three top most traded grains (corn, wheat, and rice). This information was acquired at http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities, and http://www.reuters.com/article.Figure 3: The price per metric ton of the three top most traded grains (corn, wheat, and rice). This information was acquired at http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities, and http://www.reuters.com/article.

Due to the increased efficiency of nutritional absorption in cattle, and other livestock, agricultural worker’s demand for these grains, particularly corn, will decrease significantly. This will cause a lower overhead for farmers and other agricultural workers. A lower overhead would directly result in a lower sale price for beef, chicken, and other domesticated meats.

Shipping Costs

Figure 2: The food shipping costs, in billions, between 1997-2006. This graph can be accredited to http://trade.gov/td/ocg/report08_processedfoods.pdf

As a response to the decrease in price of food products, the price of shipping will decrease. As such, our project will indirectly cause lesser costs of shipping which will benefit countries that must import food materials, as well as, other human necessities such as medical supplies and clothing. This will become especially relevant to countries that require give aid to developing nations, for a greater percentage of their allocated aid budget can go to purchasing supplies rather than paying for the shipping of the material.

Stunting>

Stunting is a direct and crippling effect of malnutrition that specifically effects child development. As an effect of our project, the individual’s stomach would absorb nutrients more efficiently. By increasing the stomach’s efficiency, individuals could continue consuming the same amount of food they currently surviving on with greatly increased nutritional benefit from said food. This would cause the levels of malnutrition to decrease substantially in all affected income brackets, therefore, causing the prevalence levels in the graph to decrease.