Over 60 percent of rural manufacturing establishments benefited from government business assistance programs (State and local tax breaks, training and technical assistance, loans, and industrial parks/enterprise zones), and 28 percent found these programs to be very important to their operations...

This study assesses the initial economic outcomes of the Delta Regional Authority (DRA), which began funding rural development projects in the Mississippi Delta region in 2002. The study focuses on non-metropolitan DRA counties and similar counties elsewhere in the Mississippi Delta region and...

The South receives more federal funding per capita than other regions, but much of the South's funding advantage comes from the defense and space industries and other functions serving national rather than regional or local objectives. In contrast, most programs designed to achieve regional and...

This report presents a conceptual framework for rural wealth creation, drawing upon the U.S. and international development literature. The framework emphasizes the importance of multiple types of assets (physical, fi nancial, human, intellectual, natural, social, political, and cultural capital)...

Farm-based recreation provides an important niche market for farmers, but limited empirical information is available on the topic. Access to two USDA databases, the 2004 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) and the 2000 National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, provided...