The study identified some reasons that explain the limited use of scientific management tools by Brazilian farmers. A matrix of management activities was built to classify these reasons. The matrix crosses the management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling, considered both in the strategic and operational levels, with the production, financial, commercial, and human resource administrative areas. This classification allowed a more precise identification of factors that are limiting the use of scientific management tools and their relationship to the farmer's competence as given by their knowledge, abilities and attitudes. The study also identified some of the major reasons that explain why extension agents were not fully involved with counseling farmers on their management activities. Primary data used in the study were collected during two phases. During the first, 8 focus group manned by cash crop farmers, beef cattle farmers, and extension agents and counselors, were used to produce qualitative information. During the second phase, quantitative information were collected via a survey with 494 individual questionnaires applied to the same public covered by phase one. For the statistical tests performed 95% of significance was required. Some conclusions of the study are: (1) the family farm predominant nature requires an specific form of xi management; (2) farmers differ significantly from extension agents or counselors on farm management subjects; (3) farmers do not alter their strategic production plans in response to price changes or other signals perceived as short or mid term movements due to costs of changes in their production processes; (4) in managing their cash flow, farmers tend to immobilize their resources as fixed assets, therefore dangerously reducing their liquidity ratios; (5) in organizing their human resources structure farms tend to concentrate into their hands amounts of responsibilities larger than they can handle; (6) in organizing their financial flows there is a large gap between the desired level of details and their abilities to collect the data; (7) in organizing farm's production infrastructure and human resource base there is a tendency to overestimate their needs in order to reduce productive or operational risks; (8) directing the productive process requires most of the time of the farmer, therefore reducing the amount of time dedicated to other areas of the administrative process; (9) the major difficulties faced in the function of controlling are linked with problems of collecting data. This is due to low levels of formal education that characterize the farm hired labor; and (10) counseling rules should not be formulated as general rules but the farm and the farmer individual characteristics must be considered in counseling for management purposes. Finally, the relative relevancy of the managerial activities in the "referential farms" were considered, together with their limiting managerial factors, in recommending improvements in the process of manager...
