Ce qui m'a le plus frappe

The title of this paper suggests that the presentation will be a subjective one. What has struck me during the last four decades has been : the evolution of the notion of agricultural economics (from farm management to agricultural policy and even, to-day, the rural world and food consumption) ; the development of research, due to the tremendous increase of the number of agricultural economists, the increasing relations with linked sciences and the progress of statistics ; better statistics have, in particular, made possible the use of more and more mathematical models a favourable evolution, on the condition that the results of the use of models are not misinterpreted ; the criticism of what is called in French "productivism" (technical progress, in order to maximize labour productivity, without taking into account all its negative effects) ; the discussions about terminology, which have shown how difficult it is to define precisely even terms which are very commonly used. Finally, the search for themes, that have been overlooked, has led me to emphasize the need to develop scientific studies on the Third World, in order to prevent dogmatists dominating in this field.