As a result of financial difficulties confronting American agriculture, public debate is focusing on longterm options for restoring economic stability and growth to the agricultural economy. Many believe that just as homeowners in small communities throughout the nation have been served by the...

The Hatch Act of 1887 was passed in the effort to make agriculture more scientific and efficient. This promise has been seriously compromised by the fact that even research of the highest quality often has limited applicability in practical farming situations. This paper attempts to provide...

Marxist social scientists have argued that the relationship between social and technical change is one of mutual interaction; innovation in the modes of production affects social organization, and social organization, in turn, has an impact on the development of novel modes of production. This...

The use of pesticides is one of the more controversial of public issues. This is so because their very widespread use produces immediate benefits to a small section of society, the agricultural industry, while the long term risks are shared by society as a whole. This discussion focuses on the...

The paper examines the social contradictions generated by patterns of reproduction of accumulation of capital, social legitimation and by present agricultural policies fostered by the State. Through a scrutiny of the role of the State in capitalism it is argued that agricultural overproduction,...

This article is a response to Paul Thompson's recent claim that individual farmers cannot have obligations to practice sustainable methods unless a large number of other producers also use them. Using a moral rights framework, I explain the relation of human interests and needs to the duties of...

Two major episodes of farm protest have occurred in the past decade. In each case, protesting farmers have chosen to create new farm organizations rather than express their grievances through one of many existing farm interest groups. The result has been the development of a durable grassroots...

Constraints on the expansion of western water supply projects have turned the attention of urban water developers to market purchases of agricultural water supplies as a source of new water. The conventional wisdom of natural resource economics suggests that such shifts should have minimal...

Based on the assumption that agricultural technologies were available and that the problem was their dissemination and adoption, U.S. development efforts have focused on establishing public-sector extension systems for farmers in developing countries. Evaluations of government extension services...