This book presents interdisciplinary advances in theory and practice pertaining to rural sustainability and sets forth an action research agenda and policy prescriptions to support rural sustainability with special emphasis on the Accession Countries to the EU. The book will address four themes.

Excerpt from Social and Economic Survey of a Community in the Red River Valley In selecting localities for the social and economic surveys conducted by the Division of Research in Agricultural Economics of the University of Minnesota, it has been the object to choose communities that arc typical of different sections of the State. The first, published in 1913, covered a township in southeastern Minnesota which is representative of those regions where diversified farming and dairying have reached a fairly high state of development. The community selected for this survey is in the Red River Valley, near Crookston, and is typical of the large-farm, grain-growing section of Minnesota. The farming community covered does not represent the very best section of the valley; better-kept farms and more fertile soil are to be found nearer the river itself, and 011 the Dakota side. The section covered in the survey includes not only land with rich "gumbo" soil, hut also sandy land where farming has not developed to so high a point. On the whole this community is typical of the average Red River Valley community in that it stands midway between the most highly developed parts of the valley and the poorer parts. This survey and the one taken simultaneously in the "cut-over" potato section in eastern Minnesota, differ from that previously described in that an attempt has been made to include both a farming and a village community instead of a farming community alone. A village has been selected as the center of economic activities, and the territory covered is that which is tributary to the village, that is. the territory which uses the village both as a shipping point and as a place in which to buy supplies and professional services. In this way it has been intended not only to bring out a comparison between life on the farm and life in a small Minnesota village, hut also to bring out the economic dependence of the one on the other In this survey it was found that the differentiation between village life and farm life had developed to so great an extent that the two are treated separately in the presentation of the data. In the eastern Minnesota survey, on the other hand, the village life and farm life are carried along together. The object of these surveys is to subject to statistical measurement certain rural social and economic forces in order to furnish more exact data as a foundation for constructive programs of rural betterment. No attempt is made in the presentation of these reports to offer such constructive programs, principally because the data obtained are confined to such restricted localities that it would he dangerous to make broad generalizations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.