© 1973 Oxford University Press and the Foundation for the European Review of Agricultural Economics
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How can agricultural economist help to solve Europe's agricultural problems?
*Former president of the Commission of the European Economic Community and member of the Commission charged with agricultural affairs.
Summary
In the last ten years the agricultural economist has become an indispensable helper for all those who have to make decisions in agricultural and related sectors. His ability to analyse and synthesize agricultural problems, and the scientific rigour of his intellectual approach, make him an invaluable assistant and frequently a leader of the economic research teams which have grown up in recent times in various European countries. The agricultural economist can help to solve the numerous and complicated problems posed by farming in Europe if he is able to make the necessary efforts to express his information requirements, grasp the different economic systems of the world about him and understand man's deep-seated aspirations.
By promoting exchanges and contacts between agricultural economists from various European countries, free of theoretical or doctrinaire constraints, it will be possible to obtain of today's economists an even more effective contribution towards solving Europe's agricultural problems. In the years ahead such a contribution should above all concern research into the means to be applied to achieve a more harmonious general organization of European agriculture, an organization of structures and markets which will permit both general economic progress and greater development of human potentialities.