ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a systematic analysis of the role of values in the formation and behavior of critical institutions in the development of US agriculture. Agricultural research policy was once concerned primarily with the allocation of resources, but it involves a growing list of new issues and conflicting interest groups. The Hatch Act produced an agricultural research system with an applied orientation that is both geographically and administratively decentralized. The success of the agricultural research system in its first century was made possible because the experiment stations, in conjunction with the United States Department of Agriculture, exploited the complementarity of disciplinary and various types of applied research and were responsive to the problems of agriculture. Agricultural research is in an uncomfortable position; it cannot take credit for transforming agriculture or for the high rates of return often claimed of it without also taking some responsibility for the side effects of industrialization.
