Rural development
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rural_development".

Note: This article provides definition of Rural development. See Rural Development for Rural Development Agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA RD).

Rural development in general is used to denote the actions and initiatives taken to improve the standard of living in non-Urban neighbourhoods, countryside, and remote villages. These communities can be exemplified with a low ratio of inhabitants to open space. Agricultural activities may be prominent in this case whereas economic activities would relate to the primary sector, production of foodstuffs and raw materials.

Development actions

Rural development actions mostly aim at the social and economic development of the areas. These programs are usually top-down from the local or regional authorities, regional development agencies, NGOs, national governments or international development organizations. But then, local populations can also bring about endogenous initiatives for development. The term is not limited to the issues for developing countries. In fact many of the developed countries have very active rural development programs.

Rural development agencies

• Rural Development (RD) agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA RD)
• Rural Development Council (RDC) of Northern Ireland
• England Rural Development Programme by DEFRA
• Rural Development programmes in Pakistan
• The George Foundation, India
• Agricultural Development & Training Society, India
• Village Earth: The Consortium for Sustainable Village-based Development

See also

• Rural
• C@R, Collaboration at Rural is a collaborative platform for working and living in rural Areas. This project is co-funded by European Commission. C@R,
• Comilla Project, the first comprehensive rural development project in developing countries.
• International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
• Regional development
• Tamil Nadu Rural Development Department.[1]

External links

• Transforming the Rural Nonfarm Economy: Opportunities and Threats in the Developing World Edited by Steven Haggblade, Peter B. R. Hazell, and Thomas Reardon (2007), Johns Hopkins University Press
• CNN - For Rural Women, Land Means Hope, The George Foundation
• Research on Agriculture and Rural Development from the Overseas Development Institute

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