Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"There's an economic lesson here, and it is that there are two fundamental economic factors that determine how much of something we buy: the price of that something and the income of the buyer. Now, folks who are happy about the drop in commodity prices are focusing on price, and what they're saying is that people have responded to these high prices that we've seen, like for gasoline, by reducing their purchases. That has reduced demand - in economics lingo - and that's actually, ultimately pushed down the price of the commodity. And so everyone's cheering that. But other economists aren't so happy because they're saying, well, there's an income effect here. And that is that people are driving less, and there's less construction going on in the country, in the world and so forth because income is down because we're having what's looking like now worldwide economic slowdown. And so the reduction in commodity prices isn't a result of something good, it's actually the result of something bad and that is a slower economy. Plus they say, when the world economy does rebound so too will the demand for these commodities, and that will put upward pressure on their prices."