This document, largely a condensation of selected papers which were presented to the 1969 Annual Agricultural Outlook Conference and some related studies, summarizes the facts and ideas about agriculture and community life in the United States with some implications for the future. American agriculture today is now partly a highly commercialized technological business and partly a mass of small-scale commercial farms and rural residential places, with both parts having new relationships with nonfarm economic development, generally urban centered. Farming is valued more as a business than a life style. But just as important are the changes in rural economics due to the tremendous impact of economic and technological change upon local institutions and community living, with the resultant adjustments that must take place. And the adjustments for meeting the changes involve both economics and human values. (Author/DM)