Agricultural Planning

Excerpts: For a good many years the Department of Agriculture and the Land Grant Colleges have been working together to make a better rural life in this country. All that is a long story, well known to all of you. One of the latest chapters in the story deals with this activity known as the "county planning project", or more recently called the "county land-use planning project". Present planning work, like the chapter of any continued story, is an outgrowth of the events that preceded it. Experience thus far with the various agricultural programs started since 1933 has developed three important problems for the Department of Agriculture and the Land Grant Colleges: 1) How to administer a national program so as to accomplish its national objectives and at the same time fit it to the many local variations so that it will serve the needs of each locality; 2) How to coordinate the various Federal, State and local agricultural programs so that they are essentially a single program when they reach the individual farm; 3) How to clarify the working relationships of the Department of Agriculture and the Land Grant Colleges.

多年来，农业部与赠地学院（Land Grant Colleges）一直携手合作，致力于改善本国的乡村生活。这一切已是一段漫长的历程，诸位对此都耳熟能详。这段历程的最新篇章之一，便是名为‘县域规划项目’的活动——近来它又被称作‘县域土地利用规划项目’。当前的规划工作，如同连载故事中的某一章节，是此前一系列事件的自然延伸。自1933年起启动的各类农业项目，其至今积累的经验为农业部与赠地学院带来了三大重要问题：1）如何管理一项国家级项目，既能实现其全国性目标，又能适配诸多地方差异，从而满足各地区的需求；2）如何协调联邦、州及地方层面的各类农业项目，使其在落地到单个农场时本质上成为一个统一的项目；3）如何厘清农业部与赠地学院之间的工作关系。