can also project the supply and price effects of changes
in farming systems to determine impacts on farm in-
comes, costs of living, the nutritional status of various
demographic groups and other important welfare in-
dicators. Economists should coordinate their efforts
with those of animal and crop scientists. SM research
should emphasize farm systems analysis of crop and
livestock enterprises, considered both separately and
jointly. Agricultural economists and farm managers
have much to contribute to the analysis of farming
systems. Economics should be incorporated into the
analyses of alternative farming systems, but not to the
exclusion of contributions from agronomists and
animal scientists (Johnson, et al., 1961; Johnson,
1982).
 The number of small, mostly part-time farms and the
number of large farms in the United States are increas-
ing, while the number of medium-sized farms is decreas-
ing. FSR is particularly needed for both small, part-time
and large-scale farms. In the less-developed world, FSR
has concentrated on technical advance with a neglect
of household aspects. FSR has not been as holistic and
integrative as the farm and home development research
and extension programs of the 1950s and '60s (Johnson,
1982). FSR for small-scale and part-time agricultural
enterprises in the United States should be based on an
integrated view of both production and the household.
The role of women on both small and large farms has
not been adequately assessed and is important in setting
research priorities. Integrated pest management and
regenerative agricultural production systems should be
addressed. Like farm management in its earlier days,
FSR today should be multidisciplinary and multidepart-
mental in colleges of agriculture. The household aspects
should be considered as they were in the 1950s.
 Land will be scarcer in the next 50 years. It will be
necessary to utilize soils not now farmed and to farm
more intensively the land now in use. It will be necessary
to invest additional capital in soils to make them into
productive lands. Farming systems analysis should em-
phasize timing of capital investments in soils to make
them productive. Systems analyses of livestock/crop pro-
duction systems are needed, with emphasis on how to
harvest improved high-yielding forages from rough,
fragile soils without the soil and forage losses associated
with heavy grazing and trampling by animals. As land
use intensifies, systems analyses of multicropping and
intercropping technologies will become crucial. Farm-
ing systems analysis must cross the traditional depart-
ments of agronomy, agricultural economics, horti-
culture, animal science and rural sociology.
 Research on firms that market, process and distribute
farm products is important. Agricultural economists
often pursue such interests under the label of industrial
organization (conduct, structure and performance)


research. New technologies may change the structure of
production, marketing, processing and distribution.
Reciprocally, sought-after changes in structure may
determine the technology created. Research efforts
should investigate the creation of technologies for
obtaining power to concentrate the control of farming
and agribusiness in fewer hands. Some technologies hav-
ing to do with price and production uncertainties of
marketing and processing through distribution firms
may be reduced. There is a need for analyses of farm
production and marketing subsystems as parts of larger
subsectorial systems.
 Equity and equality issues are raised with increasing
frequency as technological advances preferentially favor
large-scale or small-scale farms, males or females, and
various demographic groups. Equity and equality are
not the same. An equitable distribution of income or
rights and privileges is a justified but not necessarily
equal one. The International Association of Agricultural
Economists devoted its last 10-day triennial meeting,
held in Jakarta in 1982, to "Growth and Equity" and
made considerable progress in understanding the
theoretical and empirical relationships among growth,
equity and equality. Some contend that it is equitable
or justifiable to generate technologies favoring large-scale
farms because they are more productive and make a
higher proportion of their output available to the rest
of society. Others argue that more equality between
small- and large-scale farms would be equitable. Some
variations in total net incomes of farm and non-farm
laborers are justified by differences in resources con-
tributed and effort put forth and can therefore be
regarded as equitable. Equity and equality also relate
to rates of return per unit of labor, land, capital or
energy, such as marginal earnings per day of labor and
returns to marginal investments in capital and land and
use of energy. The attainment of equality in returns at
the margin does not guarantee equality in total net
returns. Equality in returns at the margin seems easier
to justify as equitable than equality in total net returns.
Issues of equity and equality within agriculture and
between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors
now receive less attention than formerly in the ARE,
despite the increasing criticism of the ARE and its
research institutions, science policies, programs and
priorities.
 Technological advances and public infrastructures sup-
port productive agriculture. SM research should con-
tinue on how technological advances and changes in
resource availability will alter marketing and informa-
tion systems, production sites and the institutions that
control agriculture. Requirements for public roads,
transportation, irrigation and drainage, and regulatory
activities will be affected.
 The private physical infrastructures that support