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5 Unemployment rate (%), 2000 Source: Center for the Study of Rural America, FRBKC. In sum, spending on agricultural policy continues to go up in the United States, but economic benefits to the broader rural economy are doubtful. Much of rural America is looking for new economic engines, and support grows for new rural policies that might assist that economic transition. The emerging rural policy framework Historically, agricultural policy has been rural policy in the United States. This stream of policy thinking extends up to and including the recently passed US farm bill.

To this end, it seeks to provide affordable housing, reliable transport and a range of rural services. The United Kingdom’s approach to rural policy development The most significant and disastrous single event to hit our rural economy in the past 18 months was the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. A more pernicious, more devastating and more indiscriminate affliction upon the countryside is difficult to imagine. Much of the critical comment about the Government’s response to the outbreak has ignored the unprecedented speed with which the disease spread and the fact that it was brought under control within 32 weeks – the same time taken during the much less severe outbreak in the 1960s.

How can existing institutions be re-directed? Or, how can new rural institutions be created? A historical analogy provides some useful insights on these questions. About a century ago, the US rural economy was extremely weak. Acknowledging the economic hard times, President Theodore Roosevelt created the “Country Life Commission” and charged it with studying the rural problem and making recommendations to correct it. The resulting report led to the creation of three highly important new institutions for rural America: the Co-operative Extension Service, the Farm Credit System, and passage of the agricultural co-operative law that led to the formation of countless new agricultural co-operative businesses.