Book excerpt: Reprint of the 1957 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Agribusiness is the business of agricultural production which involves the production, protection, sales, and marketing of the product to satisfy the customers need. The term is a portmanteau of agriculture and business and was coined in 1957 by John Davis and Ray Goldberg. It includes agrichemicals, breeding, crop production (farming or contract farming), distribution, farm machinery, processing, and seed supply, as well as marketing and retail sales. All agents of the food and fiber value chain and those institutions that influence it are part of the agribusiness system. In their book A Concept of Agribusiness, Goldberg and Davis provided a rigorous economic framework for the field. They traced a complex value-added chain that begins with the farmer's purchase of seed and livestock and ends with a product fit for the consumer's table. It may rightfully be considered one of the foundation studies on the subject. Scarce in the original.