This book provides the foundation needed to understand, interpret, and analyze farm policy. It rests on the proposition that farm policy can be studied properly only when it is placed within its social, economic, and political setting.

This book was written to make modem policy analysis methods accessible to policy analysts. It can improve policy decisions by combining the best analytical methods with the power of analysts' and decisionmakers' good judgment and with microcomputer hardware and software.

This project had origins in 1987 in communication between Yutaka Yoshioka, Chairman, Japan International Agricultural Council, and Kenneth Farrell, Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources, the University of California-Berkeley. Projects were proposed in "long-term food and consumption trends" and "a comparative analysis of farm structure in the United States and Japan" (letter from Farrell to Yoshioka, April 20, 1987). Proposals and counterproposals were sent back and forth but the project accelerated after Professor Wen Chern of The Ohio State University learned of the project...