Rural areas have always played a significant role in the global economy by providing a variety of foods and raw materials. This role is much more prominent in developing countries. Rural development is also an important part of regional policies, covering agriculture, forestry, natural resource management, land use, and economic diversity in these areas. The present study focused on investigati...

In the past farmers have been key rural citizens as farming has played an important role in local rural economies. Today there is a reduction in the number of people working on the land and farms as a business no longer make such a large direct economic contribution. At the same time the importance of farmers for managing farmland for wildlife, landscape value and tourism has been increasing. Y...

The new rural development paradigm was developed as a response to the inefficiency of the old development model. The expansion of the EU to the Mediterranean countries (Greece 1981, Portugal and Spain 1986) has pointed out large regional disparities, especially in rural regions. Thus, common agricultural policy was developed between 1957 and 1962 when it finally came into force in the EU. The a...

............................................................................................ ii Dedication .......................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .............................................................................. iv Author’s Declaration ..............................................................................

The notion of sustainability is the basis for our future possibilities. Local sustainability, in the centre of which can be found the livable settlement, is especially important in rural areas. Without developing rural areas, there is no developing society. The growth of the Earth’s population and the world economy has already surpassed the carrying capacity of this planet which may result in a...

A National Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure is not complete without explicit consideration of the needs of rural communities. While the American population has urbanized, the United States depends on rural communities for agriculture, fishing, forestry, manufacturing and mining. Approximately 20% of the US population lives in rural areas with a skew towards aging adults. Further, nearly 25...

Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing major changes in farm land ownership and use, which are both cause and consequence of the economic transformations that the region is now experiencing. The rapid rise of emergent investor farms in the 5 to 100 hectare category represents a revolutionary change in Africa’s farm structure since 2000. The rise of investor farmers is affecting the region in divers...

agriculture has a key role to play in reducing poverty and hunger in many developing countries. about 75% of the world's poor live in rural areas and most are dependent on agriculture and related activities in the rural economy. for this reason the benefits for developing countries’ farmers have been shown to be substantial if oecd member countries reformed their agricultural policies. the issu...