M. M. Kelso

A Critical Appraisal of Agricultural Economics in the Mid-Sixties

In spite of the many developments that have occurred in agricultural economics, it is only barely a science and will have difficulty improving its scientific standing. Science is characterized by an ability to predict real world occurrences with an acceptable degree of warrantability. Agricultural economics cannot do this now primarily because the actors in its models are endowed with a greater portion of omniscience than living man can claim and because they are clothed by their analysts with a rationality defined too simply as maximization of an uncomplex criterion. To prescribe for decision makers in the real world demands large elements of the artist in the counselor, calling on him to analyze and advise with experience, knack, ingenuity as well as with empirically verifiable knowledge. Agricultural economics is as much or more an art as it is a science in the service of unquestionable value it renders to policy.

Public Land Policy in the Context of Planning-Programming-Budgeting Systems

P PBS is the nearly universal code symbol for the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System of the federal government. It was ordered adopted by President Johnson in August of 1965 as the official federal system for program planning and budgeting. The Bureau of the Budget in October of that year ordered that it be applied in all respects by 22 departments, agencies, and administrations, which include all those that play any significant role in public land management. The bureau requested, but did not order, that it be applied by another 17 boards, commissions, and agencies. It was first applied by the 22 departments and agencies in the preparation of their budget requests for FY 1968, a process which began early in the calendar year 1966. Thus, it is evident that official and wide use of the system is recent in the government generally and in the public land managing agencies specifically and that experience with it by agency heads and their staffs is limited. It is not, however, a totally new system within the federal establishment. The initials PPBS first gained notoriety in 1961 when Secretary McNamara launched the system in the Department of Defense, where it was intensively developed and widely applied in defense planning and budgeting in the intervening years. William A. Carlson, deputy director of the United States Department of Agricultures Planning, Evaluation, and Programming Staff, says that PPBS