Farmer involvement in agricultural research is limited by inadequate funding, institutional policies and hierarchies, disciplinary specialization, and incompatible personalities. Additional barriers include academic emphasis on carefully controlled experiments, research priorities driven by personal interest, and farmers' reluctance to disclose trade secrets. Priorities for research conducted with public funds should be identified through a democratic process involving representatives from all sectors of agriculture. A broad, multidisciplinary, systems approach to agricultural research is needed; and farmers and researchers should consider long-term implications of projects. Better balance needs to be achieved between basic and applied research, and both should encourage innovation within the context of democratically determined research priorities. Opportunities abound for involving farmers in research as providers and recipients of information, as participants in determining priorities and ensuring practicality of methods, as collaborators and/or subjects for on-farm investigations, and as project evaluators. Farmers also need to take more initiative in getting involved in the political processes that set the stage for agricultural research.