5. You are the general manager for Mr. Ollinder ("Oll") MacDonald, who owns three farms that all produce wheat and that use only labor as inputs. He has seven loyal farmhands, who are all equally skilled and who he can assign to any of the three farms. Mr. MacDonald is committed to employing the farmhands and to growing wheat. Mr. MacDonald's friend, Mr. S.L.M. ("Slim") Pickins, is an agronomist who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mr. Pickins has estimated the following relationships between worker-years at a specific farm and total wheat yields (in thousands of bushels) at that farm:

# of workers Farm A Farm B Farm C

1 80 40 60

2 140 70 85

3 180 90 105

4 210 105 120

5 230 115 130

6 245 120 135

7 250 123 138

a. Mr. MacDonald wants to maximize the output that he can obtain by allocating the seven workers across the three farms. What allocation of the workers will maximize his output? Explain.

b. Suppose instead that Mr. MacDonald can hire all of the farm workers that he wants at a wage of $75,000/year and suppose that he expects wheat to sell for $4/bushel. Now he wants to maximize the profits. How many workers should he hire? Explain