This book attempts to contribute to a fuller understanding of perennial issues underlying farm problems and agricultural policies in the United States thus contributing to better projections of policy effects, to better forecasts of policy changes, and perhaps to better policy for agriculture.

This volume includes descriptions of empirical relationships, critiques of recent policies and consequences of agricultural policy alternatives. It examines the government's involvement with agriculture, and probes credit policies and disaster insurance.

D. Gale Johnson, one of the world's foremost agricultural economists, has over the last five decades changed the conduct of research on agricultural economics and policy. The papers brought together in "The Economics of Agriculture" reveal the breadth and depth of his influence on the creation of modern agricultural economics.
Volume 1 collects for the first time in one source Johnson's most important work. These classic papers explore the consequences of government intervention in United States and world agriculture; the economics of agricultural supply and of rural labor and human capital issues; and the analysis of agricultural productivity in poor countries, including the centrally planned economies of China and Eastern Europe. Models of precise reasoning and powerful empirical research, the papers cover a wide range of topics--from U.S. commodity price policy to the economics of population control and farm policy reform in China. Volume 1 includes a definitive bibliography of Johnson's published writings.
Volume 2 presents twenty-two papers by Johnson's former students and colleagues. International in scope, these papers explore themes and topics inspired by Johnson's work, including agricultural policy and U.S. farm prices; European Common Agricultural Policy; and agricultural and rural development in the Third World. Contributors to Volume 2 are David G. Abler, John M. Antle, Richard R. Barichello, Andrew P. Barkley, Karen Brooks, David S. Bullock, Robert E. Evenson, B. Delworth Gardner, Bruce L. Gardner, Dale M. Hoover, Wallace E. Huffman, Paul R. Johnson, Yoav Kislev, Justin Yifu Lin, Yair Mundlak, John Nash, Keijuro Otsuka, Willis Peterson, Todd E. Petzel, Vernon W.Ruttan, Maurice Schiff, G. Edward Schuh, Theodore W. Schultz, James Snyder, Vasant Sukhatme, Daniel A. Sumner, Vinod Thomas, George Tolley, and Alberto Valdes.