Question

2001 was a bad year for Red Delicious apple farmers in Washington State. The market price for Red Delicious apples was $10.61 per box. As a result, many farmers decided not to pick the apples off their trees and instead let them rot. Assuming that the Red Delicious apple market was perfectly competitive, is it possible that these farmers were profit maximizing when they decided to let their apples rot in the short-run? Briefly explain. (2 points)

Answer 1

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Step-by-step explanation:

According to this given situation in the question above, we will have to put into consideration the average variable cost and the expectation about the price of red delicious apples in the market.

A whole lot of apple farmers did not harvest the apples directly from their trees, due to the fact that their average variable cost is bigger than the price of the apples, which at the end resulted to losses as they couldn’t even cover their average fixed costs. on the other hand, a lot of other apple farmers chose to bulldoze their apple trees, as the price was bigger than their average variable cost and they were hoping for a rise in the apple prices in future, which can lead to a profitable apple farming future.