1106 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 7 
Mr. KooPMANS’ question is a very pertinent one and that is, 
whether research in agriculture is exportable; can the research done 
in the United States or Western Europe be exported to India? 1 
would say the fundamental scientific research such as the theory 
that has led to hybridization is clearly exportable, but I fear we 
cannot go very far beyond that. It is necessary to adapt varieties, 
different types of plants and even the methods of fertilization to 
local conditions, There is also one other factor that is important 
here and this is that in agriculture there is a continual fight between 
man and nature. I would say that upwards of 3/4 of all the research 
on the small grain in the United States done today is purely an 
action required by man’s fight against nature. The resistance of 
various plants to insects, disease, and viruses disappears over time 
and there is a continual fight just to maintain yields; in wheat, for 
example, in the United States, almost all research over the last thirty 
years has been to fight against nature. A wheat variety that is very 
popular in the United States and very high yielding might give a 
zero yield after two or three years in India because it became subject 
to an insect or to a disease. 
I am not quite sure how I should respond to Mr. LEONTIEF; per- 
haps no response is required other than that I agree with his view 
that a general purpose or general equilibrium model that would do 
all that special purpose models do — and much more besides — 
would constitute a major contribution to both analysis and policy. 
But after saying this, I must note that I do not believe that as a 
profession we have progressed so far in the empirical application of 
general purpose models to permit us to abandon the generation of 
special purpose models, 
Obviously special purpose models must be used with care if im- 
portant policy conflicts are to be avoided. However, two decades of 
observation of agricultural policy in the industrial countries does not 
convince me that the present unsatisfactory state of agricultural policy 
has been due to a failure to understand the « indirect effects » of the 
measures adopted. 
‘16] Johnson - pag. 56