ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief introduction to some of the issues involved in economic development so as to enable readers to understand general role of development in shaping the future of American production agriculture sector. It points out that even the most developed nations can be competitive in global markets if they maintain a development program that reduces per unit costs because firms in a country inventing new technologies have access to those innovations before firms in other nations. With regard to American agriculture, the economic development has given American farmers and ranchers a competitive edge in the past. The chapter focuses on agriculture while describing an economic development process that could be observed in many industries within a national economy. It then outlines an economic definition of management using business and economic literature so that the definition can be used in a simple model to demonstrate the situation American agriculture faces at this point in the nation's economic development.
