What Is County Planning? (As Seen by the United States Department of Agriculture and Its Action Agencies)

Excerpts: What I should like to give here today are my interpretations of what county planning is, as I think the United States Department of Agriculture sees it. County planning, as your program has called it, or agricultural land use planning, or agricultural planning, are generic terms for the concept of a process that is still evolutionary. Agricultural land use planning, as I shall call it in this paper, is not a project--it is an institution. It is a cooperative institution in the process of development. The organization and the ideals and objectives, even though their origins are deeply rooted, are not yet fully formulated. Perhaps the statement that agricultural land use planning is not a project should be qualified, in view of the fact that project agreements have been entered into with 45 States this year. The State Extension Services and Experiment Stations in these States entered into cooperative agreements for work in agricultural land use planning with the bureau of Agricultural Economics acting as "a staff agency of the Secretary in its general planning work". These project agreements and memoranda of understanding, however, represent organizational features of what I am describing as the institution of agricultural land use planning.