**3. Proposed objective of the book**

The major objective of this book was to explore the current and future issues in agriculture from an economic point of view. In addition, as a guidance to policymakers, it was hoped that this book can also provide information on the future shape of agriculture in the world. In many parts of the world, food production is not able to meet the demand for the growing population. In addition, increased income in many regions has changed the composition of the food basket demanded by today's consumers. In many nations, rural areas are losing people toward urban areas—a process called urbanization. This has created an additional stress on the economic health of agriculture. In the future, land degradation, climate change, air and water pollution, depletion of freshwater resources, loss of forested areas, and other similar trends would add further stress on the economics of the agriculture industry, and on the people associated with it. This book was intended to provide readers (policy-makers as well as academics) with a comprehensive overview of the current and future state of the art in assessing economics of agriculture and how it is going to change over time in various parts of the world. Although this was the initial intent of the book, its present contents are not totally reflective of all these areas. In fact, contents of this book relate to just a few of them that are of interest to agricultural economists currently.

*Agricultural Economics - Current Issues*
