Research and Extension Issues in Production Economics
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The role of the economist in agriculture has increased in significance in the 1970s and 80s. A review of the recent history of agriculture begins with the period of stability and relative certainty of agricultural input and product prices in the 1950s. But by the 1970s, the economic impacts of the oil crisis, inflation, and orientation to free market prices of agricultural products necessitated a transition in the role and importance of the agricultural economist. Economists became vital to farmers who had to make economic decisions on appropriate cropping patterns, when and how to market products, and how to invest wisely.
