This study of agricultural change deals simultaneously with: (a) farm planning, ie. the constant adaptation to changing circumstances at the level of the individual farm firm and (b) conditional forecasting, ie. the analysis of alternative agricultural and environmental policy views and their impact.Chapter I gives a general introduction and sets out the objectives and scope of the study. The specific research objectives were: (1) to develop a model system based on farm economics to assess the impact at farm and regional level of different scenarios concerning technical developments, agricultural price policies and environmental regulations; (2) to ascertain and describe technical developments and alternative policy options for Dutch arable farming by means of a number of scenarios; (3) to apply the scenarios and part of the system to arable farming in the North East Polder, the region that served as a case study for implementing and testing the system. The North East Polder was selected because of its intensive cropping pattern, because it is a distinct geographical entity and, because of the availability of data in particular. The time horizon was set at 2005 because of the uncertainty of predicting technical and institutional developments over a longer span of time.The attention paid to scenario development and integration of environmental quality aspects in particular, distinguishes the present study from other research on agricultural change at farm level in regions in the Netherlands. Because the analysis included an investigation of the alternative policy views it went beyond the field of regular farm management research. Furthermore it represents a shift from more practice-oriented research towards an exploration of possible and desirable long-term developments including problem perception and problem definition.Chapter II reviews and assesses the relevance of a farm economics approach to research on agricultural change. It is contended that in any adjustment in agriculture the family farm is the central ...