Agricultural Statistics For Rural Development

Agricultural statistics programs typically focus on the production and sale of agricultural products. Thus, only units with farming activities are "in scope". The farm population is declining relatively and absolutely in developed countries. Rural employment solutions will not come from agricultural development. Obtaining information for rural development via farm surveys will provide an increasingly narrow picture of rural society. Farm survey information will be most useful for rural analysis when it is presented in its rural context. Some on-farm and within-farm-household diversification will increase rural employment. This should be measured early to allow policy analysts to understand the type of unit that "adopts" such diversification strategies. Proposals to encourage these strategies will benefit from this key information. There is no special category of "rural statistics". The degree of rurality is a variable that should be included in all datasets. The challenge for a rural statistics program is to portray the data in each dataset in a rural-friendly fashion. If an agricultural statistics agency were to develop a program to present national data in rural-friendly way, an adjustment in thinking may be required for some staff. However, an agricultural statistics agency may be the only group with the interest to do the job.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Family Farms and Farming Families: The Overlap of Two Institutions

Farm Management,

Human Capital and Rural Development: What Are the Linkages?

Rural Canada is experiencing considerable "demographic pressure" as 1.76 rural persons are now looking for a job for each rural person retiring from the workforce. Rural Canada appears disadvantaged. Among OECD countries, Canada has the biggest urban-rural gap in the share of the workforce (aged 25 to 44) with university or college graduation. New jobs in the globalising economy require a high capacity to deal with disequilibria. Improving the human capital of the local workforce is essential to provide opportunities for the individuals in the workforce, regardless of where they will work. However, local economic development strategies should focus on more than human capital development to stimulate local job growth. We offer 4 measures of local community development. Our equations explain only 21 to 34 percent of the variability in these measures of local community development in the 1980s. Contrary to the research findings in the United States, the findings reported in this paper suggest that the human capital complement in Canada's communities did provide a positive (albeit weak) boost to job growth in the locality during the 1980s. Thus, what are the linkages between human capital and rural development? First, the literature suggests human capacity is largely developed by the nutrition and nurturing of children, specifically in the period of minus nine months to plus three years. Secondly, a higher human capacity in a community (as proxied by years of schooling) is weakly associated with a higher growth in community employment but is weakly associated with a lower growth in wages that appears to cause a weak association with lower aggregate community earnings. Investment in nutrition and nurturing of children is a key factor. A higher education level in a community provided only a weak employment boost during the 1980s.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

Structure and Trends of Rural Employment: Canada in the Context of OECD Countries

In 1991, 33 percent of Canada's population lived in predominantly rural regions. Employment growth in rural regions averaged 1.3 percent per year over the 1980s, ranking fourth among OECD countries. In 1991, only 11 percent of the rural workforce in Canada were working in agriculture, forestry or fishing. Within rural regions, employment growth was highest in rural areas adjacent to metropolitan centres. Business services was the fastest growing sector in all types of regions, but rural regions received only a minor boost due to the relatively low share of their workforce in business services. On average, rural areas showed less growth - however, within rural areas, there were regions that showed more growth than urban regions. Rurality does not necessarily imply slow employment growth.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

Rural and Small Town Population is Growing in the 1990s

Rural and small town Canada continues to grow. Rural and small town growth rates vary widely among the provinces. Much of the growth within rural and small town areas is in the small towns. Sub-provincial data show wide regional differences within each province. The population in larger urban centres is growing faster. Thus, the share of Canada's population living in rural and small town areas has declined to 22 percent in 1996. Newfoundland is the only province with over 50 percent of its population living in rural and small town areas.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Rural and Small Town Employment: Structure by Industry

Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

Measuring Economic Well-Being of Rural Canadians Using Income Indicators

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Recent Migration Patterns in Rural and Small Town Canada

Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

Positioning for Trade Liberalization: Structure of Earnings, Comparative and Competitive Advantage of Agricultural Households in the United States and Canada

Consumer/Household Economics, International Relations/Trade,

A New Approach to Non-CMA/CA Areas

Non-metropolitan areas in Canada are often simply referred as rural Canada, without enough attention paid to their inner differences. The Metropolitan Influence Zones (MIZ) conceptual framework allows us to divide non-metropolitan areas into No Metropolitan Influence Zone (No MIZ), Weak Metropolitan Influence Zone (Weak MIZ), and Moderate Metropolitan Influence Zone (Moderate MIZ), according to the commuting flows to and from metropolitan areas. Analyses on New Brunswick show that the nonmetropolitan population are economically disadvantaged overall compared to metropolitan population. However, there are substantial differences within nonmetropolitan areas. Population in the No Metropolitan Influence Zone do not appear to be the most disadvantaged economically. In so far as the No Metropolitan Zone may be regarded as the most rural, this casts doubt on the conventional wisdom regarding "rural" as the synonym of socio-economic disadvantage. In fact, the urban population in the No Metropolitan Influence Zone is shown to be the most disadvantaged economically. The pattern in Saskatchewan is quite different from New Brunswick. In general, median family income decreases, unemployment rate and incidence of low income families increase as the influence of metropolitan areas decreases. Together with the findings concerning New Brunswick, it is clear that non-metropolitan Canada is anything but homogeneous. More research is needed to bring out this diversity so that social policies can be better tailored to the needs of non-metropolitan Canadian population.Community/Rural/Urban Development,