Redefining goals and priorities

For more than a century, the University and the people of California have engaged in a unique, beneficial partnership for the development of natural resources and agriculture. The results have been impressive by any standard. Like any partnership, however, this one between the colleges of agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station, Cooperative Extension, and the people for whom these institutions were created requires continuing redefinition and renewal to remain in accord with changing times. Keeping in mind the basic missions of the University to create and disseminate knowledge, the partnership must be constantly alert to new needs and opportunities as they evolve both from the advancement of knowledge itself and from social, economic, and institutional changes. Agriculture of the 1980s and that in prospect for the twentyfirst century are vastly different from that which existed when the land-grant university system came into being more than a century ago. The 14 percent of our farms that today account for three-fourths of U.S. agricultural production are sciencedriven, highly capitalized businesses. At the other extreme are nearly 70 percent of the farms, relatively small in scale, which account for less than 10 percent of agricultural production and whose owners depend on off-farm employment for much of their income. In reality, agriculture is now a very heterogeneous sector with differing needs for, and differing capacities to use, technology and information flowing from our universities. Perhaps the most striking and significant change is the high degree of interdependence of agriculture and other sectors. Many of the inputs used in farming are now produced off the farm. Growers now face intense, direct competition from other sectors in the use of capital, labor, land, and water resources. They are increasingly dependent on foreign markets to absorb the products that have come from increased productivity. National and international economic policies that influence interest rates and foreign exchange rates have pervasive, direct influence on economic conditions in the farm sector. Many rural communities are no longer dominated by agriculture, but are instead mixed economies of industrial, service, and urban-related activities. In short, the assumptions of uniqueness and relative economic insularity of agriculture and rural communities upon which many of our institutions and public policies were based have been seriously eroded. Our research and extension programs must now encompass much broader, more complex subject matter and the interests of numerous groups with claims on resources used by agriculture.