AGRICOLA AGE 85925870, Extract: The thesis of this paper is that adaptive ability is unimportant when the processes generating the variables, which farmers take as exogenous, are stationary and unaltered. However, when these processes undergo structural change, adaptive ability is expected to affect the quality of production, marketing, and investment decisions. Farmers who have superior adaptive skills are expected on average to make better decisions. Furthermore, given the highly competitive nature of U.S. agriculture, successfully adapting to structural change is selective. Farmers possessing poor adaptive skill can be expected to comprise a relatively large share of the persons forced by economic circumstances to seek alternative employment or retirement, provided governmental intervention does not neutralize this selection process.
