ABSTRACT
Economists’ stock-in-trade includes: recognizing scarcity; helping to make choices; identifying tradeoffs; and making connections between the larger economy and one’s own small, individual, economic world. The original definition of economics implied an understanding, a caring for, and the management of human households, whereas ecology implied an understanding and appreciation of the interrelationships within nature’s “household”. Haylage in turn is an offshoot of improved farm “efficiency,” of substituting machinery for labor, and of minimizing time and costly rain delays that characterized the old cutting/drying/baling method. These changes took place with the blessings of Ag economists, university researchers, on down the line to the county extension agent. Meadowlark Values were shortchanged when economists pointed that Exxon’s oil spill actually increased our Gross Domestic Product, by pouring billions of dollars into the cleanup and thereby fattening pay checks as well as state and national income.
