The Rural Entrepreneurs: A History of the Stock and Station Agent Industry in Australia and New Zealand. By Simon Ville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 259. $64.95

The “agent” is almost as emblematic of Australasian farming as akubra hats, water tanks, and windmills. The agent was an employee of “stock and station” firms, who provided farmers with a range of purchased inputs and other goods and services, and assisted with the marketing of their products. As the name implies, they originated in the mid-nineteenth century to serve the needs of pioneer sheep “stations.” The firms later expanded their activities, partly in response to the farms themselves becoming multiproduct enterprises (combining wool with meat, wheat, and other grain crops), and partly to pursue full-line diversification. Having established a network of contacts with farmers through local agents in relation to the wool trade, a distribution system was in place to reap economies of scale or scope by catering to farmers' other needs such as finance, machinery, management advice, the sale or purchase of land and livestock, travel services, etc.