ABSTRACT
THE present essay differs from the remainder of this book in being concerned with a single industry. Agriculture deserves this distinction because of the strength of the challenge it appears to present to Professor Hayek's thesis. Whether or not he is right in claiming general agreement among sensible people for the view that the problem of agricultural policy now is 'to extricate governments from a system of controls in which they have become entangled and to restore the working of the market' (p. 367), there is hardly a country in the world with completely free markets for agricultural products, and probably no class of products for which the policies generally followed depart more conspicuously from the principles of the free market system. The type and extent of the intervention practised varies widely, but its general prevalence is evidence of a widespread belief that the free market system does not work in agriculture, however successful it may be in other economic sectors, or at least that agricultural policies which violate its principles are in practice politically unavoidable, whatever their economic disadvantages.
