Old McDonald has 500 acres of land to plant in corn and soybeans. The cost of cultivating corn is $42 per acre and the cost of cultivating soybeans is $30 per acre. Old McDonald has $18,600 available for cultivating these crops. If Old McDonald wishes to use all the allotted acres and his entire budget for cultivating corn and soybeans, how many acres of each crop should he plant? Define variable(s). Set up equations.

Question

This is what I did:
X= corn
Y= Soybeans
My unknown must be the number of acres.

I set it up like this:
x+y = 500
42x+30y=18,600

Answer 1

x/corn= 300 and y/soybeans=200

Answer 2

Be more precise in your definitions of the variables.
Let x be the number of acres of corn
Let y be the number of acres of soybeans

Your two equations are correct, but how did you solve them?

Your final statement of
"x/corn= 300 and y/soybeans=200" makes no sense to me.

Answer 3

x+y=500 ---> y=500-x
42x+30(500-x)=18,600
42x+15000-30x=18,600
12x+15000-15000=18600-15000
12x=3600
x=300

300+y=500
300-300+y=500-300
y=200