o the extent that technical decision-making is centralized in contracting firms, official extension effort can be concentrated. Where decisions relating to types or quality of feed, planting dates, growing methods, etc. are not in fact made on the farm there is little point in aiming technical extension work at farm managers.
Farm management research, also, should to some extent be partially reorientated to the decision-making firm rather than the individual grower. The primary task of defining the relevant objective function will be at once more simple and more complex than on the individual farm level. On the one hand the objective may be more legitimately quantified in monetary terms, and the techniques of operations research more readily applied; while on the other hand the numerous profit-making