Renowned agricultural economist Earl O. Heady helped establish and directed the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University, where he was a Distinguished Professor. His work in production-function analysis, farm-level programming models, and agricultural sector analysis continues to be both a foundation and an inspiration for future generations of economists. He is also recognized for his worldwide work in training students and in promoting multidisciplinary research efforts to solve real world problems.
The present scientific and technical revolution has brought science into the range of the most effective forces of production. The formula "science= production force" applies also to the social sciences whose explorations of human relationships and drives have reached previously unsuspected depths. Objectives, such as higher living standards and full employment, economic growth and stability, social equity and security, have both called for and provided a basis for the exploitation of possibilities offered by the natural and technical sciences. In today's agriculture, age-old traditions are in the process of disintegra tion, but the heredity of a century (or that of even a millennium as in Hungary) does not get dissolved without defending itself. Technical progress and social restratification, the emergence of new scales of values and preferences, the adjustment of the rural communities to their new tasks and conditions - all these have transformed farm operations and farming techniques. But agriculture, even under its revolutionized surface, still hides deep, almost untouched layers. If economists and agriculturalists are perplexed by the multitude and variety of the visible farm problems, there exist many others about which they can only guess, which they must follow up. In formulating and solving these problems, agricultural economists have professional tasks: (1) facilitating the most efficient use of agricultural resources from the standpoint of the national economy, and (2) helping farmers and farm people to attain their stated, socially feasible objectives.
The ideal of the family farm has been used to justify a myriad of federal farm legislation. Land grants, the distribution of irrigation water, land-grant college research and services, farm programs, and tax laws all have been affected. Yet, asserts the author, federal legislation and practices have had an institutional bias toward large-scale farms and agribusiness and have hastened the demise of family farms. Dr. Vogeler examines the struggle between land interests in the private and public sectors and finds that the myth of the family farm has been used to obscure the dominance of agribusiness and that the corporate penetration of agriculture has in turn contributed to the plight of migrant workers, the decline of small towns, and the economic difficulties of independent farmers. Dr. Vogeler also identifies the major shortcomings of agribusiness and federal land-related laws and programs; examines the regional impact of agribusiness and federal farm programs on rural areas; and considers the role of racial minorities and women in the development of agrarian capitalism. In conclusion, he offers a structural analysis that provides the means for progressive social change and states that the achievement of economic equality in rural America and the dismantling of the corporate control of agriculture can be realized through farmer-labor alliances.
This book develops an original theory of group and organizational behavior that cuts across disciplinary lines and illustrates the theory with empirical and historical studies of particular organizations. Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which individuals who share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort.
