Farmers have always had to decide what to produce and how to do it. Our aim is to give useful guides to those making decisions relating to farm management, in a form that is easy to understand. We deal with economic principles which underlie farm production and management, and how to apply them. We hope to help the ‘doers’ and those who help them. Our target audience includes extension workers, teachers and students of agriculture, operators of private farms, managers and planners of state farms, farm development authorities, staff of farm cooperatives, rural bankers and local government planners.

Economic analysis and planning of farm management becomes more relevant as new plant and animal breeds and methods of husbanding them become available, as needs for food and fibre change and grow, and as people's expectations about ‘their lot’ - of what is and what could be - change (more bread, education, motor cycles, new clothes, and pictures on the wall, too). Farm management economics is simply one way of looking at, interpreting, analysing, thinking and doing something about the situation of farming families and other rural dwellers. There are lots of other frameworks for looking at their world, too. These include politics, religion, history, and anthropology. We will stick mainly to production economics in this volume.

The area of world agricultural production we deal with is ‘the tropics'. The tropics lie roughly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. This area has small seasonal changes in day length, relaively high average temperatures, some areas are wet and hot, and others are dry and hot. Rainfall is plentiful and reliable in some parts, low and uncertain in others. There are ‘tropics’ in Africa, Latin America, Asia, the' Pacific, and parts of Australia. The range of crop products grown includes maize, millet, sorghum, sugar cane, ground nuts, coconuts, beans, rice, bananas, pineapples, coffee, tea, cocoa, vegetables, cassava and yams. Farm animals (though of less importance than crops) include beef cattle, goats, pigs, sheep, oxen, buffaloes, dairy cattle, camels, donkeys, horses, chickens, ducks, elephants, fish - even crocodiles!

Most people in the tropics rely on local agricultural products as their major source of food, fibre and income.