The present volume incorporates the major results of research carried out at the Rural Employment Policies Branch of the ll..O on the alternative forms of agricultural organisation for rural development. Several points need to be noted about the purpose and contents of the volume. An attempt was made to include in the case studies examples of the major forms of institutional organisation that prevail in the contemporary developing world. However, the editors recognise that the collection of case studies does not fully succeed in achieving this objective in as balanced and comprehensive a way as they would like. For example, it would have been desirable to have a better, and geographically more balanced, representation of cases belonging to the category of private farming. All the three cases included in the present volume are from Asia, and it would clearly be desirable to include one or more studies on some Latin American experience. While this was the intention, the actual organisation of the studies was obviated by the lack of the necessary technical manpower and the availability of suitable collaborators at the time. In comparison, the representation of the communal forms of organisation would appear to be proportionately greater. One should, therefore, note that in comparison with those of private agriculture the case studies of communal agriculture have been able to capture more of the variations in performance. However, two out of the three cases of private agriculture studied in this volume are those which are claimed to be outstanding successes. The purpose of the present volume is not to try to identify the best agrarian system. This is why comparison between systems has generally been avoided. The focus has rather been on the identification of the conditions of success under each system. To do so it is much more important to compare the performances of the cases within each broad system. This is what the editors have tried to do in Chapter 1 while allowing the individual studies to concentrate on the successes and failures of each case.