What farmers do is strongly influenced by the opportunities by which each is immediately surrounded. In this book, it is argued that six elements of those opportunities are so highly complementary that they should be considered as jointly comprising a single “Activity” for planning purposes. The book is an attempt to state in general terms, the outline of a problem that is inherently complex. It is a framework for thinking about the role of a Progressive Rural Structure and for searching for effective ways of creating it; it is not an operational blueprint. Specific suggested procedures are included primarily to illustrate how general principles can be made operational. But they should be treated as illustrative and tentative, and should not be given the aura of a universality they do not deserve. An important step in creating a modern agriculture is to classify the regions of a country on the basis of the immediacy of their potential agricultural growth, and then to develop separate development programs for each type of region.