Further, that farmer constituency was organized both in separate pressure
 groups (such as the Grange. and the Farm Bureau) and in political parties (the
 Democrats in the South and the Republicans in the Midwest). Often, white, male
 famers were elected to the legislature and to Congress in order to articulate
 their needs directly to the fund providers as the land-grant system was
 established.

 This process is very different from that experienced by the "target"
 farmers in development projects in Third World countries. There, the small
 farmers are often marginal to the political. process. Such farmers control few
 funds and have little organization at a national level-their political clout
 is negligible as a result. The mandate for the program and the funds for the
 research and extension aimed at small farmers often come from outside donors
 concerned about macro problems of food production. While such outsiders from
 either international agencies or from the national capital city try to understand
 the farmers, their understanding is often incomplete because of the top-down
 nature of the programs.

 Active political participation to influence policy in one's own immediate
 self-interest on an issue by issue basis is not always possible among Third
 World small farmers. Indeed, such issue mobilization, when it occurs, is often
 blocked directly by governments-such movements then are either radicalized or
 repressed, and often both. (The history of the National Peasant Users'
 Association in Co!ombia is an example (Bagley and Botero, 1978).) Lack of
 economic power translates into lack of political power. Upsetting the status
 quo by demanding participation in program formulation-which influences resource
 distribution-is translated often by those in power as revolutionary and
 threatening.

 A second condition that we implicitly assume is the unity of goals between
researchers and farmers. In the United States, we knew clearly what the goals
and objectives of the farming household were. One of the reasons was that we
were they. Researchers and extension agents-the employees of the. land-grant
system--came from farming backgrounds; their parents were farmers and often they
themselves continued to farm (Busch, Lacy and Sachs, 1980). Goals and objectives
never needed to be much discussed because they were implicit in the frame of
reference and upbringing of the researchers, the extension agents, and the users
of research-all of whom shared the same social background and the same
experience in practical agriculture. Almost all of the Firsc extension agents
were farmers themselves, and even today, some land-grant faculty are part-time
farmers.

 Contrast this now to developing countries. Third World small farmers often
are not able to send their sons and daughters to grade school, much less to
college or graduate school to learn agricultural technology. Young men or women
from marginal, two-hectare farms are very unlikely to attend the university, and
certainly when they do few of them will wish to return to the rural areas.
(A parallel in our country can be drawn in looking at the dearth of black
agricultural scientists. Few black youth who escaped the backbreaking work of
chopping cotton had much desire to pursue agriculture when they had a chance to
choose a different career.) Instead, those who get into the formal agricultural
research and extension system tend to be people of urban backgrounds, often from
upper class or elite origins. These people, if they have been on a farm at all