Today all of science seems to be in some political and policy difficulty. There is rising conflict over the funding for and the performance of science. In the agricultural sciences there has been a crescendo of external criticism in Congress and elsewhere ever since the National Academy of Sciences "Pound Report" in 1972 (National Academy of Sciences). Repeated criticisms from the national science establishment suggest that agricultural science lacks a basic science foundation and is a thirdrate enterprise. Their usual prescription for this problem is quite simplistic: eliminate all the "politically allocated" Hatch-type formula funding, substituting for it peer-reviewed competitive grants-open to researchers anywhere, not just in colleges of agriculture. Various advocacy groups, the media, and some politicians are also highly critical of the agricultural sciences. They focus on such dangers as uncontrolled new genetic technologies and the threats to health, safety, and the environment of other agricultural technologies. The public attitude toward science has shifted from unqualified support to a questioning ambivalence and even fear of its consequences. At the same time some state legislatures perceive their land grant colleges to have abandoned the land grant mission and agricultural problem solving for the glories of basic science. These land grant colleges of agriculture are in difficulty with their clientele and legislatures. Still other colleges of agriculture have become so applied and isolated from many of the basic disciplines that they are losing scientific and intellectual vitality. After resisting the idea for over a decade, agricultural science now shows some sign of understanding it must adjust its mission and adapt its institutions to a society and an agriculture greatly different from that of fifty or even twenty-five years ago. It would appear that the national science establishment is also slowly beginning to understand that it too faces some fundamental questions. Since World War II public sector national science policy, except in medicine and agriculture, has been focused only on the basic disciplines. Applied science and technology, when considered, is treated separately as primarily a private sector matter of industrial research and development (RD how such a diverse scientific enterprise should be institutionalized, funded, and managed; what role the private sector should play; and, indeed, what philosophic values should inform the prioritysetting process. The debate, however, is poorly informed and inflamed by parochial Fellows address.