This book examines predominantly rural regions of the United States that lag behind the rest of the country in income, employment, access to services, and measures of education and health. Case studies of nine regions examine historical background; current economic and social conditions (including demography, educational attainment, and…

The Rural Information Center (RIC), a project of two agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has served rural information needs since 1988. The targeted audience for the RIC is local officials and citizens, rather than scientists and federal officials, and the thrust of its information is rural development rather than production…

More than 500 million women live in the rural regions of Third World countries and all are illiterate. This book is intended to give these women a face and a voice. The book contains eight chapters and a list of further readings. Chapter 1, "How is illiteracy defined?", views a literate woman as one "who possesses sufficient…

This paper addresses the need to sustain rural towns in Australia through private and public investments. Rural and remote areas of Australia have provided the national economy with crucial export earnings and provided governments with royalties and taxes collected on regional resources. However, government funding for upgrading infrastructures…

This book presents an overview of the problems facing rural America and offers solutions at the national, state, and local levels. The combination of public lack of awareness and metropolitan-centered authority has created a view of rural America and its people that is contrary to both the data and actual living conditions. Rural education has…

This report outlines the major rural development programs and initiatives of the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. Diverse economic realities make necessary differential rural development policies and programs. The federal budget deficit makes it necessary that the government use creative and efficient management techniques to…

The National Rural Studies Committee seeks to identify important rural problems and encourage scholarly work on such problems. This annual meeting focused on the relationships between rural poverty and race relations and between rural and urban problems. Individual papers are: (1) "The Rural South as Seen by a Historical Geographer," by…

These two volumes examine how the public sector can help revitalize southern rural counties adversely affected by global competition and technological advances. The first volume examines public and private factors that influence investment decisions in new technologies and outcomes of those decisions; effects of automation on employment and the…

This study describes Uganda, its rural primary schools, and the Namutamba-Basic Education Integrated into Rural Development (BEIRD) project from 1971 through 1979, which infused agriculture and appropriate technology into the curricula of teacher colleges and primary schools. A similar project in Belize, the Relevant Education for Agriculture and…

There are five papers in this collection from the Division of Regional Activities: (1) "Communication and Information in Contemporary African Society" (Bimpe Aboyade), which discusses how libraries can make themselves relevant to other institutions concerned with information transfer; (2) "Libraries and Rural Development: Village…

This paper describes the use of the Nominal Group Technique as a tool to assist community leaders in 23 Georgia counties, most of them rural, in identifying and prioritizing community issues. The counties and individuals involved were participants in the Georgia County Perspective, a 12-week leadership program designed to give local leaders skills…

This document is a summary of remarks presented at a joint meeting of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Community Resource Development state leaders in 1989. The focus of the meeting was economic viability, rural extension and education, water quality, waste management, biotechnology, low-input sustainable agriculture (LISA), and rural…

By almost any definition, rural America has been medically underserved. This bibliography includes materials available from the National Agricultural Library's (NAL) Rural Information Center. The listed materials include approximately 36 books and monographs, 106 articles, and the names and addresses of 17 related associations. Certain local…

The opinions of 1,585 Iowa farmers about 8 emergent agricultural technologies (energy production from feed grains and oils; energy production from livestock waste; genetic engineering research on plants, livestock, and humans; robotics for on-farm use; confinement livestock facilities; and personal computers for farm families) were found to be…

A study examined the nonformal extension education impacts of farming systems research in three prototype areas in rural Lesotho. The extension education programs that were carried out in Lesotho from 1979 through 1984 in conjunction with a farming systems research development strategy were found to have tentative, but indicative, impacts on…