摘要：The economic context for rural development has changed markedly since the 1970s. While natural resource industries have continued to decline in importance as rural employers, the internationalization of markets, reorganization of industries, new production technologies, and the rapid development of new information technologies have eroded the competitive position of many rural areas with respect to other industries. In the South, as well as in the rest of the country, the critical rural issue for the 1990s is whether rural areas will be able to find niches to replace those they lost in the 1980s. Thus far, the new economy has been primarily an urban economy, and most rural areas have been left out. This has serious implications for rural development policy.
