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Revision Sheet

While writing project 1 was easy for me, writing project 2 challenged me from my

comfort-writing zone. The writing became clearer the more I wrote and rewrote. I pushed

through the confusions and frustrations and at the end I was able to construct strong ideas, yet I

still did not feel as confident for this project as I did for the first one. Overall, the most effective

way that I was able to grow as a writer this quarter was the constant drafts and revisions I had to

do for each project. There is still room to grow and now that I am able to go back and revise with

more time having passed by from when I last looked at the essay, I have noticed more errors and

ways to improve my writing. In this essay I compared how two different disciplines approach a

topic in their literacy and classroom practices.

For the revision of this writing project I focused on many aspects of the essay. The first

revision I made to the paper was including an APA cover letter, which I didnt have in the

original essay. Another revision that I made was fixing grammatical errors and took in account

the comments on the margin from the original copy of the essay. I also cut a lot of repetitive and

confusing sentences in many of the body paragraphs, especially the conclusion. In the original

essay the conclusion was very long and had many unorganized ideas. For the revision I cut out

most of the first part and tried to organize my ideas to sound clearer. In addition, I revised the

analysis part of some of the paragraphs because some had repetitive ideas. For example in the

paragraph 3, I revised the analysis so the ideas could sound more straight forward and smoothers.

In the original essay the ideas were too repetitive and too wordy.
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Running head: Research in Economic and Agricultural Studies

Climate Change Research in Economic and Agricultural Studies

Alondra Islas

University of California, Santa Barbara

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People have the option to choose their career path based on their passions that have either

small or big contributions towards the world. From astronomers to marine biologist to doctors,

each profession makes contributions to societies, local, and global. People have learned to tackle

subjects with different ideas, thoughts, methods, procedures, and practices. Climate change is a

topic approached through several discourse communities. Since climate change is a complex and

multi-faced phenomenon, it is seen as having a ripple effect, allowing many people to approach

it in different professions. Furthermore, it could be studied through many disciplines, such as

economic and agricultural studies, because it plays into many aspects of life. An agriculturalist

would study climate change differently than economists because each discipline contains unique

knowledge in their field. The use of literacy practices and classroom practices used is what sets

disciplines apart from each other. Although the practices agriculturalists and economics differ,

both arrive at the idea that climate change is causing dire consequences towards Earth and our

living space. Also, both disciplines have ideas and research that intersect because in the real

world not all careers are isolated; instead they build off from other perspectives.

In the course syllabus for the Economics 9, the introduction to economics, Cindy Benelli

states that economists study how a society uses its labor, land, and materials to make goods and

observe economic trends. Economists tend to work in businesses, the government, or academia

studying and forecasting economic trends. They observe, analyze, and make predictions for

supply and demand. Meanwhile, agriculturalists study the best methods to produce food and

crops. Agriculturalists usually work with farming, food scientists, environmental industries, or

technicians. Literacy practices they usually engage in are scientific experiments, observations,

data analysis, fieldwork, and laboratory research. According to the practices used in agricultural

studies, this discipline involves more physically hands on work than economists. Now that the
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difference between both disciplines has been established, we can see the literacy practices

scholars demonstrate in their academic articles.

Agriculturalists who study climate change will focus their research on how the growth in

crops, soil fertility, or production is being affected by weather conditions. Venkatraman

Srinivasan, Praveen Kumar, and Stephen P. Long (2016) study the effects that global

atmospheric change has on the food production of soybeans. They found that climate change is

increasing the production of leaves, but decreasing the food production of soybeans. This is the

fourth largest food crop in the world, which means a change in this growth will affect peoples

lifestyle across the world. While Srinivasan et al. are looking at the consequences from this study

they come to the idea that, failure to increase yields on land currently in crop production to meet

future demand will elevate price and incentivize expansion onto sensitive land, accelerating

global change through destruction of perennial vegetation and soil tillage (1). While

agriculturalists view the side effects of climate change on soil and production, they use economic

thinking to conclude further ideas. As climate change remains unresolved farmers have to find an

alternative way to grow soybeans because at the end of the day they have to be able to sell their

crops and if crops arent highly produced then prices have to be adjusted. Here we can see how

two discourse communities overlap to predict further conclusions from a study.

Additionally, one of the driving questions for Srinivasan et al. in their study was why the

increase of leaf did not result in the increase in NPP. This is an example of where this discourse

community uses lexis, where only scholars familiar in this field understand the acronym of

NPP. The authors do not mention beforehand what the acronym implied because they assume

other agriculturalists are reading this article. After searching, NPP stands for net primary

production, which is the rate where a biological organisms gains energy (photosynthesis).
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Additionally, their answer to this question was, The predicted total photosynthetic CO2 uptake,

that is, gross primary production (GPP) at midday, is 13% higher under observed peak LAI (6.8)

than at the predicted optimum LAI for yield (20). Which continues to be difficult for readers

unfamiliar with the background in this field. Based on all the results provided, laboratory

experiments were needed in order to find how much CO2 a plant contained. Literacy practices

agriculturalists use in their studies are laboratory experiments, observations, and quantitative

analysis to make conclusions. In other words, they have to put in actual work to gain real results;

unlike economists use reasoning to predict results that are not quite real.

Now that we saw how literacy practices are embedded in the field of economics we can

see how classroom practices are used in environmental studies 149/geography 161-world

agriculture, food, and population course. The syllabus for this discourse is much more lengthier

than a syllabus for an economics course, which presents the idea that this discipline has more

detail and content for students to memorize and learn. In contrast, an economic course consists of

more rational thinking rather than memorization. Which proves the idea that agriculture studies

involves a longer procedure of running tests, laboratory research, and quantitative research to

obtain results. The professor creates an outline of what the course will cover every lecture and

special dates for quizzes, midterm, and final. He even highlights dates and gets creative with font

style and font size to emphasize some ideas, similar in the style of experimentations.

Experiments need to be organized and have step-by-step procedure. The professor also has a

lengthy introduction of the class very detailed using specific lexis. An economics syllabus course

will differ where the course is more straightforward in its style of analysis.

The discipline of economics includes looking at supply and demand in societies and

predicting and analyzing trends. Researchers in this field tend to use a lot of lexis in their
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scholarly articles because they expect the audience to be other experts in the field. Academic

articles are composed of mostly analysis and minimal visuals or graphs. One of the literacy

practices repetitively seen is qualitative analysis, where economics try to gain an understanding

through reason and motivation. For example, Andy Hultquist, Robert S.Wood, and Rebecca

J.Romsdahl (2015) study the relationship between climate change policies in specific locations,

they use previous research and ideas from other scholars to arrive at ideas. An example of this is

when they state, Advocates argue that the availability of carbon neutral energy at competitive

prices will spur the adoption of more ambitious mitigation policies, but that at present, it is

more important to establish a clear direction of travel for every jurisdiction than to specify the

exact point and time of arrival (Rayner 2010, p. 620). We argue that this clear line of travel in

every jurisdiction is unlikely to occur without a better understanding of the factors that lead to

the adoption of climate protection policies. Clearly Hultquist et al. present someone elses

previous research and all of them collaborate to an agreeable idea based on the previous

statement. This shows that economics tend to build ideas off each other to further their

knowledge.

In a class setting, the practices used there are similar practices as seen in literacy. Cindy

Benelli teaches economics 9, introduction to economics, a required course for economics majors.

Since it is an introductory class it will introduce the grounding concepts of this discipline.

Compared to how literacy practices are used by economics, in a classroom the professor defines

words used in the field because she knows the audience is students. She does not seem to be

authoritative because she allows students to participate, asks open-ended questions, and allows

TAs to teach and add on their thoughts. This demonstrates that the discipline of economics

includes having an open mind from different perspectives and thoughts to help build a solid idea.
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The professor implements this practice in a classroom just as it is practiced in literacy. In class

she also has a lot of interpretation, analysis, and description similar to what articles are heavily

based on. Therefore, literacy practices and classroom practices in economics have similarities of

engaging the audience with the same kind of thinking.

All disciplines have implemented the use of their own practices to make its area of study

unique. Although all disciplines differ, in the real world they engage ideas to further their

studies. Climate change is a topic viewed through many fields to understand its effects on the

world and people. At the end of the day economists will make policies and laws that will benefit

the economy of a society. As seen along the past years not many policies have been established

to better climate change because most of the changes involve resources that can have a downfall

on the economy. Economists also have the choice to believe whether the effects of climate

change are true or not, while agriculturalist get to see the reality of climate change in real life. So

far only environmentalists and agriculturalists have tried to advertise policies to benefit climate

change and the people. Climate change has a direct impact on food crops and the people who

work in this field. Differently, climate change has an indirect impact on the economy so it

doesnt affect peoples careers directly in these fields. Although both discourse communities are

very distinct they work hand in hand with one another. When climate change is affecting crops

and producing less supply, the demand will go up and the price of the supply will rise bringing

good to the economy. Nothing in this world is constructed on its own, all disciplines work

together to support ideas.

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References

Hultquist, A., Wood, R. S., & Romsdahl, R. J. (2015). The Relationship Between Climate

Change Policy and Socioeconomic Changes in the U.S. Great Plains. Urban Affairs

Review, 53(1), 138-174. doi:10.1177/1078087415609737

Srinivasan, V., Kumar, P., & Long, S. P. (2016). Decreasing, not increasing, leaf area will raise

crop yields under global atmospheric change. Global Change Biology, 23(4), 1626-1635.

doi:10.1111/gcb.13526

University of California, Santa Barbara (2011). Economics 9 Introduction to Economics. Santa

Barbara, Ca. Retrieved from

http://econ.ucsb.edu/~benelli/syllabus/9.htm

University of California, Santa Barbara (2013). Syllabus, World Agriculture, Food & Population.

Santa Barbara, Ca. Retrieved from

http://es.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.envs.d7/files/sitefiles/academics/courses/pdf/

ES149F13syl.pdf