What is the new rural paradigm? Its main characteristics are a focus on places rather than sectors and an emphasis on investments rather than subsidies. In an era of reduced agricultural employment, this report highlights the important and diverse challenges facing rural areas, their unused...

This book examines the major rural developments and the issues that policy makers have been dealing with across the OECD over the last two decades. The OECD Conference, held in Siena, Italy, in July 2002, on the Future of Rural Policy, identified the need for rural policies to look beyond...

This conference proceedings examines problems of low incomes and high unemployment in rural areas of the Baltic countries. It compares the situation of the Baltic States with that in Western Europe, examines developments in Baltic labour markets and factors affecting labour mobility, and looks...

Agriculture is no longer the dominant sector in rural economies in OECD countries. But it is still the key sector in managing the land, and many ancillary industries are dependant on agriculture. Both agricultural and rural policy are changing to respond to society's concerns regarding food...

Rural development policy addresses the welfare of rural households and communities. With a majority of the world's poor located in rural areas, the resilience of rural poverty in industrialized countries, and a significant share of environmental degradation the byproduct of rural poverty, the...