rural

White House Announces Winners of Rural Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge

The Obama administration today announced the 12 winners of the multi-agency Rural Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge. Approximately $9 million in federal funding will help support rural public-private partnerships to promote job creation, accelerate innovation and provide assistance to entrepreneurs and businesses in a wide range of industrial sectors in rural regions across the country.

President Announces Capital Initiatives for Rural Small Businesses

Speaking during a Rural Economic Forum at Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta, IA, President Obama announced several new initiatives to promote economic growth in rural areas, including two new capital programs. The Small Business Administration (SBA) will partner with USDA to double its current rate of investment in rural small businesses to $350 million over the next five years. This will be accomplished through SBA's Impact Investment Fund.

Arkansas Task Force Recommends State Investments in Tech Companies, Co-locating Economic Development Agencies

To attract and grow high technology businesses and streamline its economic development efforts, a task force created in 2007 to study economic competitiveness in Arkansas recommends the state remove its constitutional prohibition on state equity investments in priva

Unlocking Rural Competitiveness: The Role of Regional Clusters

This report is composed of two main components. The first explores the relationships between rural economies, industry clusters, and economic indicators, leading to the creation of an online database. The second part takes this database, and along with stakeholder surveys, to create an economic development strategy for an 8 county region in Indiana.

Transforming the Regions Economy: Road to Renaissance (Detroit)

Detroit Renaissance is leading a region-wide collaboration that is developing strategies and taking actions to transform that region’s economy. Called the Road to Renaissance, the initiative has benchmarked 6 peer domestic and international regions, gathered input from over 650 local leaders from 500 different organizations, analyzed the region’s business and workforce strengths and been led by a 30 member steering committee.

Concepts and Guidelines for Diagnostic Assessments of Agricultural Innovation Capacity

This paper is divided into two parts. The first part sets out a conceptual framework for diagnostic assessments of agricultural innovation capacity. It explains that contemporary patterns of agricultural development demand fresh thinking on how innovation can be promoted in ways that can deal with rapidly evolving production and market conditions. The second part of the paper provides guidance on how the principles of this conceptual framework can be used in diagnostic assessments.

FAPRI Briefing Book 2006

Despite continued high energy prices, the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) expects world economic growth to remain strong in the coming decade, at around 3 percent per annum, boosting consumption of vegetable oil, dairy products, and meat in many parts of the world. FAPRI also reports that new policy developments and rising interest in renewable fuels due to high fossil energy costs are expected to boost ethanol and biodiesel markets in the United States, European Union, and Asia.

Rural Economic Development: More Assurance is Needed that Grant Funding Information is Accurately Reported

The report identifies 86 federal programs in 10 federal agencies and 3 regional commissions and authorities that provide economic development funding. Findings indicate that in 2002-2004, the programs provided approximately $200 billion in total economic development funding, about $150 billion of which could be tracked to the county level or below.

Indian Agriculture and Rural Development

In this brief, the authors suggest five areas for action to put rural India on a higher growth trajectory that would cut hunger, malnutrition, and unemployment at a much faster pace than has been the case so far. The authors emphasize investments with a human face that include and reach out to the rural poor and a reorientation of subsidies toward such investments.