A number of agricultural resource, environmental and health concerns will condition the capacity of the agricultural sector in both developed and developing countries to increase production in the coming century. These concerns give rise to four generic issues: (a) Many of the issues are international in scope. In turn, the responses will also have to be international or at least multinational. (b) The capacity to design and build the institutions necessary to achieve increases in agricultural production is limited. (c) Much more attention needs to be given to designing technologies and institutions that increase the number of alternative actions that can be taken in the future, and (d) National and international capacities to monitor changes in the sources of and changes in productivity, environmental amenities and health conditions are severely limited.