Implications for Land Grant Universities of the Changing Political Economy of Agricultural and Rural America: Discussion

Abstract

Despite the fact that the tones of the two papers are quite different, Jerry Skees and George McDowell have succeeded in massaging most of my biases regarding our problems in the land grant university system. I agree with the thrusts of both papers in so far as they go. There has been a failure of leadership within the research and extension hierarchy, but there has also been a failure of agricultural economists to diagnose and act upon changes in the social environment within which many of us practice our profession.