In cooperation with researchers in many national agricultural research programs, CIMMYT has sought to develop procedures with help to focus agricultural research squarely on the needs of farmers. The process invo1ves collaboration of biological scientists and economists to identify the groups of farmers for whom technologies are to be developed, determining their circumstances and problems, screening this information for research opportunities, and then implementing the resulting research program on experiment stations and on the fields of representative farmers. CIMMYT's Economics Program has emphasized developing procedures for the first stage of this process, through to establishing research opportunities. The evolution of the procedures, now synthesized in a manual "Planning Technologies Appropriate to Farmers: Concepts and Procedures" has been strongly influenced by collaborative research with many national programs and with CIMMYT's wheat and maize training programs. Our efforts with national programs began in 1974 with Zaire's national maize program, then moved to work in Tunisia, Pakistan, and Egypt. The pace of work accelerated notably in 1976 with assignment of regional economists stimulating similar work in Kenya, Tanzania, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Panama, El Salvador, and India. Cooperation with still other national programs is now underway. We believe that the resulting procedures offer cost effective and robust guidelines to national programs. We are now preparing reports that illustrate the implementation of these procedures in various national programs. While not all such work can be reported, we take this opportunity to thank all of those who have collaborated with us. This report presents work conducted in conjunction with the Zambian agricultural research program with the objective oí describing farmer circumstances in a maize producing region. It emphasizes the use of secondary data and informal and formal survey techniques for identifying potential research avenues for improving maize technology in the region.