Rural Policy Makers Research Articles

A “global garden” is possible: urban and rural life, and forestry

“In the next 20 years, Homo sapiens, ‘the wise human’, will become Homo sapiens urbanus in virtually all regions of the planet.” UN-Habitat (2008)“Nature is not merely ‘nice.’ It is not just a matter of improving one's mood, rather it is a vital ingredient in healthy human functioning.” Kaplan (1992)“The sustainability of the Third Landscape, of diversity, of biological future, is connected to human number, mainly to practices utilized by humans.” Clément (2006)Not only is there empirical evidence of the nexus between forests and human life, but it is also the subject of multidisciplinary studies involving professionals from many different disciplines: foresters, architects, sociologists, urban planners, rural policymakers and even psychologists. If the human population continues to grow, the world's forests will exist only in the framework of societal needs. The world's forests play a multifaceted and fundamental role both in urban and rural areas, in productive and environmental realms. Thus, global attention is required for devising effective forestry policy, even if it appears utopian. Humans can cultivate the entire planet, but in the long term should support an intrinsic millennial perspective for nature and biology, in relation to both cultivated (urban and rural) and uncultivated lands. Ultimately, the globe is a small and fragile “garden” and sustainable development will be possible by embracing the “technocentric” vision of sustainability. The main forest product worldwide is still roundwood, which provides revenue for landowners and workers. However, the non-market benefits provided by forests are fundamental in both the country and the city, and could alleviate the dire environmental conditions in urban areas, where the majority of the world's people are already living. A global governance of sustainability can support the world's forests, and all natural resources, only by taking into account human numbers.

Microeconomic Analysis of Rural Nonfarm Activities in the Kyrgyz Republic: What Determines Participation and Returns?

This paper uses two representative household budget surveys from the Kyrgyz Republic to analyze factors influencing participation and returns from different types of nonfarm activities in 2005 and 2006. Nonfarm activities are found to be most important for the poor, who are pushed out of agriculture due to limited and poor land resources. We also show that different nonfarm activities have different human capital requirements. Unlike other studies, we use the double hurdle model which allows us to demonstrate that a number of variables have different effects on participation and income from nonfarm activities. For example, residing in remote areas and lack of capital are found to stimulate participation in nonfarm activities, but decrease nonfarm income. Overall, the empirical analysis confirms the importance of rural nonfarm activities and indicates that equipping poor households to enable them to move towards better remunerative nonfarm activities should be a priority for Kyrgyz rural policy makers.

English

  The rise in gross incomes and the decline in poverty in rural areas are considered evidence of economic restructuring and technological development efforts in last three decades in the United States. However, these positive effects of transformations in rural areas still do not match the rate of economic growth enjoyed by urban areas. This paper examined income convergence in 875 counties of the 10-state southeastern region using Census data for 1980 and 2000. Logarithmic difference of average per capita income between those years was regressed on socioeconomic variables using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) model. The study found important roles of human capital development and employment growth in income convergence and variations in income growth in places that differ in demographic attributes, job opportunities, geography, and resource concentrations. The study provided important insights to rural policy makers to formulate place-based economic development strategies which are practical and realistic to address economic development in the most impoverished rural places in the southeastern United States.   Key words: Agglomeration, census, clusters, convergence, industries, employment, income, southeastern.

RURAL ADOLESCENT SUBSTANCE ABUSE: PREVENTION IMPLICATIONS FROM THE EVIDENCE

Purpose: To identify appropriate adolescent substance abuse prevention programming for rural populations through the application of three concepts: effectiveness (best clinical evidence), efficiency (benefit to rural populations), and equality (access). Methods: A review of the literature guided by these concepts was conducted to identify criteria essential to the tailored development of rural adolescent substance abuse prevention programming. An advanced search of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) was then conducted using criteria tailored to rural populations. Findings: Results from the literature search support the inclusion of two components directed at improving quality of outcomes through a customized approach to rural adolescent substance abuse prevention programming: inclusion of parents in prevention education efforts and use of the Internet as an appropriate method of program delivery. These components were satisfied by one program listed on SAMHSA’s NREPP: Parenting Wisely . Conclusions: While Parenting Wisely is an ideal program for rural adolescent substance abuse prevention strategy, it may not be suitable for all communities. Parallel to recommendations from the SAMHSA and Institute of Medicine, other evidence-based prevention programs need to be expanded to include a web-based delivery option. Strategies for moving forward would include the use of advanced-practice nurses at the forefront of discussion for rural professionals, researchers, educators, and policymakers. Key Words: Access to Care, Technology, Substance Abuse Prevention, Rural

Participation and returns in rural nonfarm activities: evidence from the Kyrgyz Republic

AbstractThis article uses two representative household budget surveys from the Kyrgyz Republic to analyze factors influencing participation and returns from different types of nonfarm activities in 2005 and 2006. We use the double hurdle and Heckman models, which allow us to demonstrate that a number of variables has different effects on participation and income from nonfarm activities. For example, residing in remote areas and lack of capital are found to stimulate participation in nonfarm activities, but decrease nonfarm income. Results are robust, but using the Heckman model seems to produce more accurate results for returns to education and gender under the presence of selection bias. Overall, nonfarm activities are found to be most important for the poor, who are pushed out of agriculture due to limited and poor land resources. This indicates that equipping poor households to enable them to move towards better remunerative nonfarm activities should be a priority for Kyrgyz rural policy makers.

Undocumented immigration and the business of farm labor contracting in the USA

PurposeFarm labor contractors operate as intermediaries between farmworkers and agricultural employers by recruiting and supplying labor to US farms. In a political economy where there are employer sanctions for hiring workers without proper documentation, contractors share risk alongside final employers. Furthermore, contractors may facilitate quick employment matches during time sensitive agricultural tasks such as harvesting. For undocumented workers, using a contractor may decrease uncertainty associated with a foreign labor market and ease language barriers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current role of labor contractors in delivering immigrant agricultural workers, particularly undocumented workers, to farms.Design/methodology/approachDeterminants of labor contractor use and relationships to final worker outcomes are examined using econometric methods and a large nationally‐representative worker survey that is distinctive in that it distinguishes legal status.FindingsUndocumented farmworkers are shown to be more likely to use contractors than are documented workers, though statistical significance is sensitive to the inclusion of crop and task indicators, and wages and fringe compensation to workers who use contractors are lower, even after controlling for legal status.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper contributes to limited recent academic work on the role of labor contractors in US agriculture. Future work may examine ongoing changes to this role in the context of mutable immigration policy and public opinion.Practical implicationsIt is argued that the decline in labor contracting increases the need for employer‐level bilingual communication skills and compliance with labor regulations.Originality/valueUnderstanding current dynamics of the agricultural labor market should be of value to scholars of rural economies, farm owners and agricultural policymakers.

Engaging the underserved in community leadership development: Step Up to Leadership graduates in northwest Missouri tell their stories

In the face of growing challenges in rural America, policy-makers, academics, and practitioners are increasingly advocating for a more homegrown approach to rural development that seeks to identify and build upon internal community assets, such as the development of community leadership and entrepreneurship capacity. An interpretive case study analysis explored the impact of a community leadership program on participants’ leadership skills, their well-being, and that of their communities. Data were obtained from participant surveys and interviews with graduates of the program and professionals knowledgeable of the leadership program. Through participation in the program, participants improved their ability to interact with others; gained increased understanding of civic responsibility and awareness of local resources; improved their knowledge of community issues; and grew in self-confidence, employability, and optimism. Interaction with professionals and other community members during and outside the program created networking opportunities – bridging social capital.

Bridging between the regional degree and the community approaches to rurality—A suggestion for a definition of rurality for everyday use

The territorial approach to rural development highlights the role of local actors, networks, culture, nature and landscape amenities. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) definition of rurality is, however, not capable of dealing with local and community definitions of rurality, which vary from study to study. In everyday life, physical planners, rural policymakers and local rural actors need a consistent definition of rurality. The reason is that structural reforms have led to larger administrative units that have less experience-based knowledge about the individual rural communities within a municipality than do local authorities. In this article, we propose a consistent definition of rurality that is easy for physical planners, rural policy makers and local rural actors to understand and apply in everyday use. In addition, our definition will be able to deal with both the regional and the community approach to rurality. This definition is based on an interdisciplinary literature review that starts with land cover and geographical mapping. The definition is then applied to the case of Denmark.

The Decentralization Process of Rural Development Policy in Greece

This study aims at critically assessing the decentralization process of rural policy-making and delivery in Greece. Drawing upon a case study of the farm modernization scheme, research findings indicate that despite remarkable decentralization efforts, rural development in Greece seems to maintain its primarily state-emanated design and implementation. Long-standing top-down and sectoral orientation in the formulation of this policy still holds. Apart from the redistribution of responsibilities and the multiplication of competent authorities, a genuine delegation of competencies and resources is needed, coupled with a renewed awareness of integrated policies from the actors involved at all administrative levels.

The “Good” Rural Death: A report of An Ethnographic Study in Alberta, Canada

Much concern has centred on the "good" death since the modern hospice/palliative care movement began, and considerable progress has been made in urban services to promote the good death. Little is known about the perspectives of people who live in rural and remote areas of Canada on the good death and how this good death might be enabled in those areas. This report is of an ethnographic study in rural Alberta involving English-speaking Albertans. An identical study in Quebec will be reported elsewhere. The 2006-07 Alberta study involved 13 interviews with individuals to understand their personal viewpoints or perspectives and how they were shaped by their experiences, followed by focus group discussions in two representative rural communities for additional insights from rural policy-makers and care providers. Four themes in the Alberta data highlight critical elements of the good rural death. These findings are expected to contribute to rural/remote palliative and end-of-life care developments.

Determinants of Local Economic Performance: Experience from Rural England

The determinants of local economic performance have provided a focus for theoretical debate and posed a conundrum for rural policy makers aiming to address local and regional disparities in the face of global competitiveness. The complex interrelationship of potential explanatory factors is conceptualized in terms of five ‘capitals’: economic, human, social, environmental and cultural. Findings from in-depth interviews with local stakeholders in eight English districts emphasise the interplay between local historical and cultural contexts, the capacity of local actors to stimulate development and the potential to create ‘open’ economies and societies in explaining uneven patterns of performance across rural England.

Rural Movements in Europe: Scandinavia and the Accession States

This paper explores the national rural/village movements now established in some 16 European countries, with special focus on those in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The aim of the paper is to raise awareness by providing information on the significance of rural social movements, rather than to attempt a detailed analysis. Starting in the 1970s in some Scandinavian and Western European countries, as a local community response to rural decline, the village movements have built into major national forces, and have recently expanded into the EU accession states in Central and Eastern Europe. They were established to address issues of rural decline, agricultural change, migration, centralization and EU accession. They are now also organizing themselves at EU level, to provide a voice for rural communities in Europe. This is a notable example of a structured approach to mobilizing rural communities to become stronger agents of local development and to participate in rural policy-making at local, regional, national and EU levels. The paper draws on information gained in a recently completed initial investigation of the national village movements in Estonia, Finland, Slovakia and Denmark, together with information from Sweden. The information is based on that gathered from a wide range of interviews and the minimal documentation available from the movements themselves. The experiences of the movements in enabling local structural development, capacity-building, empowerment and action are documented, as is their work to develop strategic planning and advocacy. The paper identifies the motivating forces, structural and process models, activities and outcomes of the different movements. It takes account of the effects of differing national contexts, and identifies some key elements of experience and learning.

Selling Safety: The Farm Safety Movement’s Emergence and Evolution from 1940–1975

Abstract This paper examines both the farm accident problem and the institutional response it engendered. Farm safety leaders fashioned a largely educational movement to address farm families’ technologically complex environments, since farming’s entrepreneurial nature required a different approach than did efforts in other occupational domains. The nation’s rural policymakers had largely neglected the issue until the Second World War, when they recognized that farm accidents threatened the nation’s wartime mobilization efforts. The farm safety movement was characterized by a cooperative effort, which included the National Safety Council, the United States Department of Agriculture, land grant colleges, and the nation’s rural youth organizations. However, efforts to impose more stringent regulations faced resistance from farmers after the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Selling Safety: The Farm Safety Movement's Emergence and Evolution from 1940-1975

This paper examines both the farm accident problem and the institutional response it engendered. Farm safety leaders fashioned a largely educational movement to address farm families’ technologically complex environments, since farming’s entrepreneurial nature required a different approach than did efforts in other occupational domains. The nation’s rural policymakers had largely neglected that issue until the Second World War, when they recognised that farm accidents threatened the nation’s wartime mobilization efforts. The farm safety movement was characterized by a cooperative effort, which included the National Safety Council, the United States Department of Agriculture, land grant colleges, and the nation’s rural youth organizations. However, efforts to impose more stringent regulations faced resistance from farmers after the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Decentralisation and devolution to the English regions: Assessing the implications for rural policy and delivery

The White Paper Your Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English Regions opened the way for reforms to regional government in England which, it asserted, will improve decision-making and deliver better quality services. In the field of rural policy, too, there are demands for decentralisation to improve service delivery and reflect the diversity of rural areas. Drawing upon a case study of rural policy making and implementation in the English West Midlands, this paper explores current institutional structures for rural policy making and how further administrative decentralisation or political devolution might enhance them. It reveals a complex set of fragmented structures and blurred accountabilities in which policy implementation is an outstanding concern. The Government's administrative reforms, together with proposals to decentralise responsibility for rural service delivery, may assist in promoting greater differentiation and co-ordination at the regional tier. Nonetheless, in the absence of the transfer of significant resources and influence to an elected regional body, efforts to establish a more distinct and coherent approach to rural policy-making and delivery will continue to be hampered.

Rural policy development: an NRHA and PACE association collaborative model.

The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) offers a unique model of comprehensive care for frail, elderly people. To date, all of the PACE programs have been located in urban areas. Rural advocates and policymakers, however, believe the program may hold great promise for use in rural areas, which have higher percentages of elderly residents than urban areas. In 2002, the National Rural Health Association and the National PACE Association convened a meeting that brought together PACE experts, policymakers, and rural health care providers to examine PACE and its applicability for rural communities. The meeting participants concluded that there were many rural communities where the PACE model might not only be appropriate but also highly successful in caring for rural, frail, elderly people. This article examines the notion of expanding the PACE model to rural communities, including some of the barriers and some of the possible solutions that might make PACE a viable part of the rural health care delivery system.

Measuring age differentials in representations of rurality in The Netherlands

The importance of representations of the rural in discussing the competition for rural space by different functions is increasingly acknowledged. It is known from the literature that these representations differ for specific groups of actors, but empirical measurement of such differences lags far behind conceptual discussions. In this paper we propose methodologies of classifying different representations and analysing these in the framework of a multinomial logit regression model. The analysis shows that visual-figurative images of the countryside are predominant. Elderly people tend to add a socio-cultural flavour to such images. Younger people, however, add functional representations of rurality to the visual-figurative image base. They often portray the countryside as a one-dimensional agricultural production zone. Such age differences will clearly have consequences for rural policies. In the first place in developing policies that are targeted towards specific age groups. In the second place in deconstructing age-related representations of rural policy makers themselves. What the exact consequences will be is however less clear. For that it is important to develop a methodology for separating age effects from cohort effects.

Civic Community Approaches to Rural Development in the South: Economic Growth with Prosperity

The free market-based policies of the corporate community model have skewed economic development across the South. For many small, rural communities, the consequences of global capitalism have resulted in declining real wages, high underemployment, and increasing rates of income inequality. Backed by recent scholarship and grassroots movements that suggest that both civic engagement and the presence of smaller-scale, locally controlled enterprises can help determine whether communities prosper or decline, this paper explores the links between social structure and rural development in the South. The goal is to expand our understanding of civic community theory as an alternative to the neoclassical economic model of development. Using a local problem-solving framework, we suggest that a departure from the traditional, neoclassical path of development is in order. We conclude that rural policy makers must establish a role for civic community in the rural development process if they wish to protect the welfare of workers and communities, while increasing the prospects of economic growth with prosperity.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AND RURAL COMMUNITY COLLEGES: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

This article reviews four major reports of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, regarding the digital divide and rural community colleges. The first report was published in 1995; subsequent reports were issued in 1998, 1999, and 2000. It is clear that a digital divide, as measured by lower penetration rates of telephone usage, personal computer ownership, and Internet access and usage, exist in rural America. These lower rates exist for nearly every category measured, including single parent households, young and old persons, minority and majority populations, persons with disabilities, adult educational attainment, and income. The reports reveal that in many aspects the divide is growing. Current data on PC ownership and Internet usage are presented for dissemination to practitioners. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this divide for rural community college students, teachers, administrators, and policymakers.

Rural landscapes, representations and racism: examining multicultural citizenship and policy-making in the English countryside

Traditionally issues of race and racism have tended not to be associated with the English countryside. The limited existing research in the area has shown that the presumed dominance of whiteness in the countryside has been used as a basis from which to dismiss the relevancy of race as a rural political or policy concern despite the existence of rural-based minority ethnic communities and despite high levels of rural racism. In the post Macpherson climate and with rural issues currently attracting political and policy attention this article examines the relationship between landscapes and belonging and suggests that racism is differently manifested in different contexts. The essay argues that there are recent indicators of tentative shifts among some rural policy-makers in terms of recognizing that racism is not an urban phenomenon and draws on the early experiences of gaining access to two rural case-study areas to shed light on both this shift and the notion that there are specifically rural forms of racism.