Evolution of the objectives and the principles of intervention of rural development policies on the long-term

Abstract

Just like rural areas themselves, rural development policies have undergone a radical change over the last decades. This text presents the rural development concepts included in these policies, their processes, their intervention instruments and the strategies that they can promote. It insists on the fact that this evolution is not linear. With the objective of reconciling fairness and efficiency, rural development policies continually oscillate between support for the evolution of the agricultural sector, aiming at a more global and integrated development of a homogeneous rural territory, creating a synergy between rural territories and urban dynamics at the regional scale.