genetic improvements in livestock to overcome en-
vironmental stresses, diseases and insect pests. Crops,
livestock and poultry producers will all benefit from new
technologies to conserve water, energy and unskilled
labor. Agribusinesses and related industries-food pro-
cessing, fertilizer, petroleum, farm machinery and food
marketing businesses-will also require new improved
technologies.
 Critical institutional, personnel and financial re-
quirements must also be met if technological advances
are to be used in socially desirable ways. Not all the new
agricultural technologies likely to be developed in the
decades ahead will be such that creators and distributors
in the private sector will be able to appropriate enough
of their benefits to cover costs of research, development,
production and distribution. Hybrid corn was a special
case in which it was feasible for such companies to ap-
propriate a reasonable proportion of benefits. In addi-
tion to more cases like hybrid corn, the future is likely
to involve socially beneficial but privately unprofitable
cases. These will need to be handled in the public sector
by agricultural experiment stations and extension ser-
vices. In instances where appropriation of benefits
and/or ability to shift costs to others will be easy, the
private sector will need to be regulated to prevent
environmental pollution, contamination of the food
chain and the development of undesirable rural, social
and economic structures. Social science research must
be conducted in advance if we are to have capacity to
deal with such cases. Some such research is now getting
underway in agricultural colleges, other colleges and
universities. In addition, social science research (DISC
and as parts of SM and PS) will be needed to help devise
institutional controls over the general level of
agricultural output to keep capacity from being
prematurely used and overused.
 Much emphasis is now being wisely directed to DISC
research in support of crop production technology.
However, important neglected DISC research is needed
for livestock production and tgri', .., .....
More DISC research is also needed in the social, institu-
tional and human development sciences if we are to have
the institutions and human skills required to create, use
and neither over- nor underregulate the new tech-
nologies targeted above.
 To accomplish our targets, agricultural research (PS,
 SM and DISC) requires: expanded budgets, more highly
 skilled personnel, and improvements in administration
 and coordination.


 Budget

 U.S. publicly supported agricultural research has in-
 creased little in recent years, and support is not keeping


pace with either inflation or needs and opportunities.
Less than 2 percent of the total federal research and
development (R&D) budget is allocated for support of
agricultural research and educational programs. Within
the USDA, less than 2 percent of the current budget goes
for research and education. The USDA should have a
more substantial competitive research grant program to
support high priority DISC, PS and SM research related
to food production, forestry and human nutrition. The
social sciences should be included. The addition of PS
and SM research in the competitive grants research pro-
gram would make it necessary to increase the average
grant size and recognize the multidisciplinary nature of
PS and SM research. Rather than the present $15 million
to $17 million program, a $75 million to $100 million
annual program (in real 1983 dollars) in grants open to
all the nation's scientific expertise is needed. This should
be increased through time as a constant proportion of
the value of agricultural output. The needs and oppor-
tunities examined in this report indicate that this increase
in competitive grant funding should be accompanied by
a 10 percent annual increase (in real 1983 dollars) in sus-
tained support of PS, SM and DISC research facilities,
properties and personnel of state Agricultural Experi-
ment Stations, and for the Agricultural Research Service
(ARS), Economic Research Service (ERS) and Statistical
Research Service (SRS) of the USDA. These increases
should continue for at least 10 years before being
reappraised.


 Personnel

 Achieving the desired capacity for agricultural pro-
 duction will require highly trained people to do
 agricultural and food research. The public agricultural
 research system is not attracting or holding enough
 bright young biological, physical and social scientists to
 meet this critical need. The private sector also needs
 more skilled managers, consultants and scientists. Severe
 shortages now exist in pest management, marketing,
 animal health and veterinary toxicology, resource
 management and the rural social sciences. The state
 Agricultural Experiment Stations provide the bulk (90
 percent) of support for advanced degrees in agriculture.
 This must be supplemented with federal-level funds. If
 we depend entirely on state funds, the training of agri-
 cultural scientists will be haphazardly underfunded. We
 recommend that the USDA initiate a vastly expanded
 postdoctoral fellowship program to support outstanding
 young scientists for advanced training in the biological,
 physical and social dimensions of PS, SM and DISC
 aspects of agricultural research. We applaud current
 congressional action to initiate a $10 million post-
 doctoral fellowship program within the USDA's
 Agricultural Research Service. It should be extended to