Problems and Prospects for U.S. Agriculture in the 1980's : Baseline Projections for the Farm Sector to 1989

Excerpts from the Introduction: This report was generated to provide policymakers and program managers with a broad indication of the direction the agricultural sector is likely to move in over the decade ahead. The materials presented here are not forecasts of what will happen but rather projections of what could happen if the study's assumptions about factors inside and outside the farm sector prove valid. Hence, while the report includes a number of detailed projections, its value is in its identification of the factors likely to be at play in the 1980's and their general implications for the state of U.S. agriculture. The projections concentrate on key variables such as foreign food, feed, and fiber production, consumption, and trade; domestic commodity supply-demand balances; and sector-wide indicators such as resource and input use, farm income, and food prices.