Agricultural Policies and Rural Development

摘要

The phrase "rural development policies" is now used - for convenience and/or rhetorical reasons - to cover a wide variety of state interventions. Most of these may be grouped as follows: aids to farm development, including modernisation, restructuring(e.g. new land-holding patterns, conversion to organic production status) and (on-farm) diversification, with investment, both "hard" (e.g. land and machinery investment) and "soft" (e.g. farmer training, support for farmer cooperatives); other farm interventions, such as those concerning animal welfare, or food safety and health; agri-environmental payments and regulation (direct, or "cross compliance"), e.g. for farming practices considered "friendly" in terms of soil, water, air, wildlife, landscape, etc.; aids to non-agricultural development in rural areas, e.g. investment in public infrastructure and services, and grants and other assistance to non-farm rural enterprises, generally or selectively, e.g. tourism.