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By "agricultural policy" I mean the pattern of those acts of government, especially of national governments, which specifically concern the agricultural segment of society. The discussion of agricultural policy, like that of any other social problem, involves all the social sciences, perhaps one should say all the sciences. Economic analysis, dealing as it does with a limited range of abstractions, cannot pretend to give an "answer" to any social problem, agricultural policy included. Sociological, political, legal, historical, psychological, technical considerations obviously enter into the discussion. Nevertheless it may be useful to ask what are the insights yielded by economic analysis, as a discipline of thought and as a system of related propositions, in approaching a problem of this degree of generality. The case for economics, or for any other discipline of thought, is the case for specialization. The problems involved in the study of even so relatively simple a problem as agricultural policy are beyond the wit of any single mind to explore fully. To appreciate the problems of agriculture fully one would need to be an economist, sociologist, political scientist, social psychologist, biologist, chemist, physicist, botanist, zoologist, and much more; and in these days no one man can hope to be expert in all fields. The only way in which we can even begin to encompass any problem is by specialization; but, according to what is almost the first proposition in economics, specialization is useless without exchange. The aim of this paper is a little intellectual trade, a small offering of an economist to other disciplines, in the hope perhaps of some enlightenment in return.

When the founder of the science which has become Economics came to write the title-page of his immortal work, he wrote boldly An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. From this it might be thought that Economics was the science of wealth; that it would tell us what are the conditions which make one society wealthy and one poor, or which make for the growth and decline of wealth, in general or in particular. In fact, however, the science has not developed primarily along these lines, in spite of many interesting and important observations on this subject on the part of the standard writers. Especially in these days we seem to be interested not in Plutology—the science of wealth—but in Economy—the science of management, of budgeting, of the distribution of given resources. In other words, our interest has shifted from the study of the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations to the study of equilibrium and disequilibrium.In many ways this shift of emphasis is regrettable, in spite of the undoubted achievements of equilibrium theory. Part of the loss of prestige from which Economics has suffered is undoubtedly due to this very point. To the general public, equilibrium seems to be a vague and irrelevant ideal. Most governments, and most individuals, would rather be in chronic disequilibrium, and be rich, than be in glorious equilibrium, and be poor. The assumption which frequently underlies economic homiletics—that equilibrium is synonymous with riches and disequilibrium with poverty—is not one which can be long maintained.