Field Of Rural Development Research Articles

Impact of Non-refundable European Funds on Beneficiaries in the Rural Area

The failure of the support policy in the field of rural development during the first stages oftransition was determined by the slow pace of the economic reform and shaping of the market-viableagricultural structures. The research undertaken allowed for the depiction of tendencies andtheoretically and practically-fundamented conclusions for the efficient access and employment ofEuropean funding for rural development. The study aims at the absorption degree of European preaccession(SAPARD) and post-accession (FEADR) funds and their impact on beneficiaries in Clujcounty, in the North-West Development Region. The method for data collection and processingselected was the inquiry, while the research instrument employed was the survey. Other methodutilized in the present paper include the determination of causal relationships by means of the Hisquarecriterion. Farmers and entrepreneurs in the rural area must be supported to take full benefit ofFEADR funding opportunities, as the instrument that is most adapted to the development needs ofrural communities and that provides an overall coherent context for European support on local ruraldevelopment strategies.

Farmer Field Schools in Rural Kenya: A Transformative Learning Experience

As participatory agricultural education increases in use, knowledge is needed of its impact on the daily lives of the participants beyond benefits for farming. The purpose of this study was to explore the case of Farmer Field Schools (FFS) under the lens of transformative learning theory, in order to understand the impact that participatory and group–based learning can have on the lives of participants. The findings revealed significant impacts demonstrated by a personal transformation, changes in gender roles and relations, customs and traditions, and community relations, and an increase in household economic development. The implications are relevant both within the fields of rural development and for transformative learning theory.

Local Coordination to Enhance Accountability of Rural Development Field Workers to Villagers in Bangladesh

Local Coordination to Enhance Accountability of Rural Development Field Workers to Villagers in Bangladesh

The role of the agricultural economist in the rural development of low-income countries

This paper discusses the importance of achieving rural development in low-income countries while at the same time stressing the practical difficulties of promoting effective policies towards that end. It concentrates on the roles of agricultural economists in rural development at both the micro- and macro-levels; however, the importance of integration of this with other disciplines is recognised to be as crucial to successful understanding, planning and policy making as is integrated action in the field of rural development itself.

Some Aspects of Problem Rural Areas in Britain

This paper deals with underdeveloped agricultural areas in these islands. It does not deal thoroughly with them?that would be too great a task to undertake at the present time. Yet during the past few years a small research group in the Agricultural Land Service of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has been making a number of investigations in the field of rural development, which are a step towards understanding our problem areas, and which form the theme of this paper. It may be that this theme will be disappointing even to food conscious Britons. So many persons appear to have got into the habit of painting the problems and remedies of underdeveloped areas on a world canvas, or at least that of a continent. The Groundnuts Scheme, President Truman's Fourth Point and the Colombo Plan in South-east Asia have all had their share of publicity. Thinking big and wide is important in sketching out the framework of the world food problem, but sometimes the global approach is used as an excuse for lazy thinking, often to be followed by spectacular comment. It is a wide field where a single nought in a total figure looks unimportant and can be made to appear unimportant, and where the broad brush type of analysis often gives a definiteness and a simplicity to an area and to a problem which just does not exist in practice. Therefore, though a consideration of rural areas in Britain where all is not well may appear to be only a small canvas to examine, it should enable us to look at the problems in fair detail, and to concern ourselves with possible ways of making improve? ments and their probable costs and returns. There are (or should be) no political barriers to cross. There are no wide differences in cultural pattern, in language, in degrees of education and in basic social patterns when dealing with rural development within the confines of one long established political entity. There are, admittedly, differences in these elements between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Britain?differences which prove awkward in getting ideas across and promoting action taken by local people. Yet these differences are minute as compared with the problems of grafting West European and North American ideas and techniques on to the cultural patterns of rural areas in Africa, South America and Asia. When asked to define a problem area one is tempted to emphasize that it is much easier to say when an area does not appear to constitute a general problem. The latter type surely covers those areas which appear to have the capacity, both in their people and in their resources, to handle their own difficulties without recourse to outside help. They are the areas of which we hear little. They are not the subject of Royal Commissions of enquiry, examining committees or special legislation. They appear to adjust them? selves to changes in political, economic and social circumstances with grumbles maybe, but nothing more. In contrast, problem areas are those