Question

Use the following News Wire to answer one question:

NEWS WIRE ENTRY AND EXIT

Catfish Farmers Quitting

Belzoni, Mississippi. This self-proclaimed "Catfish Capital of the World" is hurting again. The people of Belzoni rode the catfish boom for a couple of decades. As Americans developed a taste for this delicate, low-fat, high-protein fish in the 1970s, row-crop farmers dug fish ponds and profited from the increased demand for their product. When president Ronald Reagan proclaimed "National Catfish Day" on June 25, 1987, catfish farmers were spawning huge profits. As Reagan noted, catfish production increased by an astonishing 1,200 percent in only ten years (1975-1985).The situation in Belzoni isn't so heady today. The farmers are facing increasing feed and electricity costs, which have made production more expensive in Belzoni. Increased domestic production together with a flood of imports from Vietnam have pushed market prices down. Belzoni catfish farmers can't do much to stop this. As Jimmy Avery, an aquaculture professor at Mississippi State Extension, has noted, "The biggest challenge financially is that you don't have control over the price of your inputs or the sales price of your product. As corn and soybean prices go up, catfish feed costs rise accordingly... and catfish farmers have to take what someone is willing to pay on the day they harvest fish." With market prices down as low as 95 cents per pound and costs averaging about $1 a pound, local catfish farmers are throwing in the towel. Pond acreage in the county has declined by 50 percent in the last year.

Source: Belzoni, Mississippi State University Extension and News Reports, 2018.

According to the News Wire, what curve is shifting to alter the market equilibrium?

a) Supply

b) Demand

c) Average total cost

d) Marginal cost

e) Price

Answer 1