Agriculture in the united states has undergone dramatic technological and social-economic structural change during the past century. Theodore W. Schultz was the first to emphasize the role of science-based technological change as a key force for causing agriculture to undergo a transition from traditional to modernizing conditions.1 It is now well established that institutionalized research, not research under taken by farmers themselves, is the key factor for producing innovations or knowledge leading to new technologies and advances in agricultural productivity under modernization. In the United States, it has taken many decades to develop the legal, political, scientific, and economic structure for the agri cultural R&D system