Content_Flamingo_583 t1_j4a8nit wrote
Reply to comment by powercow in Corridors between Western U.S. national parks would greatly increase the persistence time of mammals. Establishing an expanded protected area network based on identified mammal pathways and incorporating adjacent wilderness areas would greatly enlarge available habitat for mammal species by Wagamaga
Increased demand doesn’t always raise price, due to economies of scale, and the fact that the supply can be elastic and adjusted based on demand.
Think about it, if most people who ate tomatoes now stopped eating tomatoes, would the prices of tomatoes go up or down in the long run?
Sure, in the short term there would be a glut, and the price would go down. But then the supply itself would shrink. Tomatoes would become a ‘niche’ vegetable, like an exotic fruit, and the lack of scale would mean that they would be more expensive on the whole.
It’s the same reason why increased demand for novel consumer products like computers or smart phones pushes the price down in the long run. The increased demand results in the production of greater supply, and due to economies of scale, that item becomes cheaper on the whole.
All this is to say, if we all bought half as much food, production would shrink, and the price would effectively stay the same for us at the consumer level.
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