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 establishment
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 measures
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 problems
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. »
