AbstractPerusal of the literature of agricultural economics and some exposure to the work of personnel engaged in agricultural extension suggest the need to review relationships between the disciplines of production economics, farm management, and extension. This need arises because each of the disciplines might be expected to have significant effects on the scope, methodology, and usefulness of the others. My purpose is to try to set in perspective some of the differences in viewpoint that have emerged between different participants in agricultural economics and agricultural extension. This perspective may help to point the way to release from some aspects of the new orthodoxy within agricultural economics, whic is discussed in the paper.