Agriculture Must Change

Abstract

In the previous chapter a few of the recent changes in agriculture in the industrial countries were described. The purpose was primarily to emphasize the rapidity with which agriculture has adjusted in the period since the Second World War. It was shown that the organization of agriculture in Western Europe, North America, Japan and Oceania was capable of large and numerous adjustments to changing conditions and that many of these adjustments were made with remarkable speed. The chapter was also intended to make clear that policy-makers who fail to recognize the speed of adjustment that is possible in modern agriculture do so at considerable risk. Policies that are based on the assumption that agriculture is relatively static and subject to slow rates of change will have a series of effects that are largely unintended and undesired; and such policies will become far more costly than anticipated.