Entrepreneurship is the new focal point for rural development. This was the consensus of 200 rural policy officials and experts who gathered in Kansas City on April 28-29 for the fourth annual rural policy conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Center for the Study of...

A growing chorus of rural leaders agrees that new opportunities are on the horizon for rural America. Economic consolidation and outmigration need not be rural America’s future. The question most rural regions now face is this: How to claim the new opportunities? At root, this question is all...

New approaches to rural policy are badly needed, as past reliance on subsidies and policies focused on a single sector are yielding diminishing results. Fortunately, a new frontier of policy experiments is emerging, and this frontier holds great promise in helping rural regions seize new...

A new meat industry is rapidly emerging in the United States, as food retailers, meat processors, and farms and ranches coalesce into fewer and larger businesses. The industry’s rapid consolidation in recent years has triggered alarms that the industry’s new giants in retailing and...

Knowledge has become the new premium fuel for economic growth in the 21st century. Knowledge fuels new ideas and innovations to boost productivity – and to create new products, new firms, new jobs, and new wealth. Some analysts estimate that knowledge-based activity accounts for half of the...

Another big package of government financial aid cushioned the farm slump in 2000 but did little to lift agriculture's spirit. Overall, the industry's major financial indicators stayed remarkably healthy. Farmers delivered more red meat and poultry to supermarkets than ever before, and strong...

The rural economy broke free from the reins of recession in 2004 with an especially strong performance in the farm sector. Net farm income easily surpassed the record high of 2003. And the weakness that plagued the nonfarm rural economy in recent years appears to have been replaced with stronger...

Drought and a jobless recovery battered the rural economy in 2002. The worst drought since the Dust Bowl gripped many parts of rural America, leading to forest fires, livestock liquidations, short crop supplies, and a plunge in farm incomes. After a solid start, a soft period for the national...

The year just past was one of turbulent markets and unmet expectations for most of U.S. agriculture. Public and private attention focused mainly on the steep drop in farm commodity prices, and when the soggy markets might show signs of recovery. Yet while they captured most of the headlines,...

U.S. agriculture appears to be passing into a new era marked by both greater risk and potentially greater rewards. Pending legislation would lower the government safety net that for decades has supported farm incomes and reduced the risk of farming. If signed into law by the President, the new...