ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the fate of national industry associations in the 21st century amidst global change. The term agricultural interest group refers to associations that have as their primary purpose the collective political organization and representation of individual farmers or agricultural primary producers. The book concerns with general and national farm interest groups and not with commodity or regionally specific organizations. It focuses on the national federations. In some European (EU) nations, the division between smaller or peasant farmers and larger commercial farmers is expressed in separate agricultural interest group organizations, such as in Spain. The sum of agricultural interest groups operating at all levels within each nation state is referred to as the agricultural interest group system. If adaptation is the logical consequence of a thesis of resilience, then transformation is the logical partner of a thesis of group decline.
