Q1.
Revisit the table in your report. Which of the items on your list can be labelled as ‘land’?
Answer
Anything on the list that nature supplied, not people. Remember the chapter’s wide definition: in economics ‘land’ covers not only geographical land but soil, forests, water, air, sunlight, minerals, oil and natural gas. Go down the table on page 165 and apply that test.
| Item in the report | Land? | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Perishables; fresh produce; fresh vegetables and fruits; raw ingredients like vegetables and fruits; food grains, milk | Yes — land-based | All of it is grown in soil, with water and sunlight, or comes from animals reared on land |
| Storage space; the shop premises; the pitch on which the cart or stall stands | Yes, for the plot | The site is land; the building put up on it is capital. Rent paid for a shop is really payment for both together |
| Gas (cooking gas) | Yes | Natural gas and petroleum are named in the chapter as natural resources |
| Water | Yes | Named directly in the definition of land |
| Electricity | Partly | The current itself is produced by people, but its source is a natural resource — coal, water in a dam, or sunlight. The honest answer is that it is a produced input made from land |
| Baskets, weighing scale, cart or stall, utensils, scissors, tools, spare parts, computers | No — capital | Human-made resources used to produce goods and services |
| Cook/helper; knowledge and skills to handle mobile components | No — labour and human capital | Effort, and the skill behind the effort |
| Packaged goods, creams, beauty products | No — capital (bought stock) | They were made in some other factory, from land-based raw materials, before this shop bought them |
Why some rows are genuinely hard: because most inputs are natural resources that have already passed through somebody’s hands. A tomato in the field is land; the same tomato in a crate on a truck already contains labour, a vehicle and fuel. Economists solve this by asking what is being paid for at the margin — you pay rent for a site because nobody produced it, but you pay a price for a crate because somebody did. Do not be embarrassed if this took some arguing in your group; end-of-chapter Question 1 asks you exactly what difficulties you faced.
Tip: a quick sorting rule that works for almost every row — could it exist if no human being had ever lived? Soil, water, sunlight, gas: yes. Weighing scale, cream, spare part: no.