yields have actually declined in some countries, despite the continuous introduction of improved rice varieties—a phenomenon thought to be related to the decreasing productivity of intensively cultivated soils (Pingali, 1994). These developments are important because over the next 30 years world population is expected to grow by nearly 100 million people per year, with most growth occurring in developing regions (Prinstrup-Anderson and Pandya-Lorch, 1994).

The United States has provincial as well as altruistic reasons for its interest in preventing world population growth from translating into global poverty, widespread malnutrition, and environmental degradation. Global political, social, and economic stability are necessary for the realization of expanded markets for U.S. industrial as well as agricultural goods. Market expansion relies absolutely on the availability and implementation of technologies and policies that increase agricultural production, while simultaneously enhancing and sustaining social and natural systems. A sound research base is needed as the foundation for development and application of those technologies and policies.

Historically, high social rates of return,¹ estimated to be between 30 and 50 percent, have resulted from investment in agricultural research (Alston and Pardey, 1995b). These estimates compare favorably with returns on conventional investments in the private sector (Fuglie et al., 1996), which suggests a system is in place capable of maintaining a high-quality, productive research base in food and agricultural sciences. Yet, challenges and potential opportunities lie ahead as that system adapts to a changing ecology of science, characterized by constraints on federal funding, increased public awareness of social problems that research has been unable to resolve, and consequential public dissatisfaction with science and government (Byerly and Pielke, 1995).

Ensuring a socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable food and agricultural system requires scientific advancements across the entire scope of a discovery-integration-dissemination-application continuum, identified by Boyer (1990). This committee uses "research continuum"—denoting interactions among fundamental, integrative, adaptive, and disseminated research—to refer to what is described by Boyer (1990) and Malone (1994) as the "cascade of knowledge."

Fundamental research on the structure and functions of systems as small as genes, as critical as cells, as complex as organisms, and as large as agroecosystems is the essential basis of the discoveries needed to advance food and agricultural performance.

Integrative research is needed to combine fundamental discoveries and thus gain the comprehensive knowledge required to develop more targeted practices, technologies, or policies. Independent, fundamental research programs have been useful in the discovery of (a) the gene that confers resistance in a particular food crop species to a particular plant disease of viral origin; (b) similar chemical compositions of plant leaves in a variety of wild and cultivated plant species that exhibit natural resistance to viral plant pathogens; (c) disease-resistance characteristics of crop species bred for high yields; and (d) the relative, economic values of different attributes of crop species' varieties. These separate discoveries by scientists in different disciplines (genetics, plant physiology, crop breeding, and economics) have their greatest potential value realized when related to one

FRONT MATTER (R1-R14)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (1-12)

1 INTRODUCTION (13-20)

2 A LAND GRANT SYSTEM FOR TOMORROW: OVERARCHING THEMES AND RECOMMENDATIONS (21-45)

3 TEACHING (46-68)

4 RESEARCH (69-86)

5 EXTENSION (87-104)

REFERENCES (105-110)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS (111-116)

INDEX (117-122)