ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the primary philosophical and ethical issues and arguments associated with the impacts of mainstream US agricultural research and the technology development agenda on family farms. Popular and academic references to the farm crisis have been abundant throughout the 1970s, and especially in the 1980s. Major motion pictures, television news, magazines such as Newsweek and Time, an overabundance of scholarly books, and issues of journals, such as Agriculture and Human Values, have brought attention to the plight of the family farmer and the changing structure of agriculture. Suppose a large number of farmers in the $40,000 to $100,000 annual revenue group, for example, come to face difficult or nearly impossible financial problems. Since family farmers are most likely to be in this middle income group, this situation can be described as a crisis for family farm as a class. The term "agrarian" generally refers to philosophies favoring family farms.
