Rural development processes can be interpreted as the result of an increasingly complex interplay of different driving forces. The 'rural web' concept, developed recently as a theoretical framework, emerges as the intersection of six inter-related dimensions (endogenity, novelty production,...

Romania cannot join the European Union with agricultural plots with sizes less than 1 hectare. The change of mentality is still difficult. In the rural areas there is already a tendency among people of not willing to get associated any more, people do not want production co-operatives any more,...

During the transition period Poland achieved a rather quick rate of economic growth, exceeding 4.9% per annum. Inflation rate significantly decreased, even below the level observed in many EU countries. However, there were not only successes. Poland has reported very high, growing unemployment...

Social and economic transformations in Poland had as one of the consequences the fact that rural areas faced a number of difficulties and challenges. In connection with the political system transformation and Poland's accession to the European Union, problems appeared, concerning mainly the...

The report presents the results from the analysis of the population of Polish rural municipalities. The analysis was related to broadly conceived “sustained developmentâ€. An essential aspect was also associated with “comparison†(yielding “development qualityâ€),...

The state of rural social infrastructure and its impact on the quality of life and functioning of rural communities are traditionally seen as marginal to the “mainstream†development activities. The low quality of social infrastructure is, however, an important factor in the...

LEADER axis presents a novelty in the Slovenian agricultural policy. The main object of the current paper is to describe the implementation process of the 4th axis of Rural Development Programme of Slovenia in the period 2007-2013 and analysis of the Annual Implementation Plans for the year 2008...

The primary aim of the present paper is to introduce a model which permits relevant, actual and continuous monitoring of the multifunctionality of agriculture in Slovenia and, using the model, to evaluate to what extent key elements of multifunctional agriculture were in fact infl uenced by...

At the beginning we delimited agricultural areas. Then we compared the picture obtained with the spatial diversity of human capital. The analysis of human capital was based on three groups of measures. They are related to investments on human capital, its resources and effectiveness of its...

The production of "local food" has gained importance in the public discussion during the last few years as a result of increasing general interest in food safety, as well as environmental concerns regarding food production and transport. Often-cited arguments for purchasing local products relate...