1142 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28 
have attempted to intervene in a wide variety of ways to 
affect agricultural development. In the United States there has 
been systematic intervention in agricultural development 
through policies for the settlement of the frontier, the establish- 
ment of the land grant colleges and the associated experiment 
stations and extension services. The British Corn Laws, which 
have recently been reincarnated across the English Channel as 
the Common Agricultural Policy, could be described as an 
agricultural development plan in the loose sense in which the 
term is often used today. 
The past three decades has witnessed a significant change 
in the scope and content of agricultural plans or policies. All 
of the major industrial nations have evolved numerous measu- 
res and programs in an effort to achieve a variety of objectives 
in agriculture and for the farm population. Many of the less 
developed countries have enunciated far reaching agricultural 
development plans. One thing that is clear from the events of 
the last three decades, at least to me, is that there is no magic 
that follows from a development plan or policy. Order and 
progress have not been created out of chaos. It cannot be said 
that today the agricultural problems confronting the world or 
any large part of it are any nearer solution than was true three 
decades ago. In fact, I believe that in most of the industrial 
countries the magnitude of the very difficult adjustment pro- 
blems now facing agriculture is to a considerable degree the 
consequence of the agricultural plans and policies that have 
been followed. 
The preliminary outline of the Study Week included the 
following sentence: « The development of economic theory and 
recent experience of various economic svstems have bv now 
objectives have not been achievable given the quantities of resources implied 
in the plans. In addition, past performance has indicated that goals for 
certain kev input aguantities such as fertilizers would not be achieved. 
161 Johnson - pag. »