ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS
AND
AGRICULTURAL AND DEVELOPMENT PLANS
D. GALE (JOHNSON
University of Chicago - Chicago - U.S.A.
In this paper I use the term agricultural development plan
as though it were synonymous with agricultural policy. I be-
lieve that this is in keeping with the usage that prevails in the
world today. If one defines a plan as a statement of achiev-
able objectives, an indication of the means or resources that
will be available to achieve the objectives, and the institutional
arrangements that will be used to relate the means or resour-
ces to the objectives, one can find few examples of agricultural
plans. Though the details have never been published, I am
reasonably confident that a plan approximately fulfilling the
conditions of the above definition existed for the virgin and
idle land program of the Soviet Union. In the same sense, it
can be said that plans have been evolved for the development
of new lands through irrigation or drainage in the United States
and in many other parts of the world.
But at national levels there have probably been no deve-
lopment plans for agriculture that would satisfy the above de-
inition * There is, of course, no denving that governments
() I do not believe that the agricultural components of the Soviet
Union's economic plans, either the five-year plans or the current seven
vear plan, meet the criteria of a plan specified in the text. In general. the
Johnson - pag.