Rural Change and Development - Essay Example

Rural Change and Development Year of Study/Semester: Submitted: Rural Change andDevelopment in Context According to one of the reports by the World Bank, it is estimated that about 75 percent of the poor people live in the rural areas. To this end, North and South regions of England are no exception. Just as is the case with other countries, the main source of livelihood to communities living in these regions is agriculture. The past few decades have witnessed concerted efforts by various stakeholders to come up with feasible strategies to alleviate if not eradicate poverty within these regions as well as other parts across the globe.

Majority of these development initiatives have tended to focus on the need to improve the social and economic conditions of households and persons in these regions within England. Characterized by high index of poverty, such measures have always been welcome by the local communities. Poverty has had the impact of causing social exclusion of these regions or communities from the other parts of the country. In most cases, the aforementioned rural development actions have tended to take a top-down approach; an aspect which has often resulted to a great deal of challenges at the implementation stage.

Faced with this reality, the main actors such as local authorities, national governments and the non-governmental organizations have had to revert to the principle of participatory approach with the main objective being to provide a platform for the local people to participate in such initiatives. In all these development actions, the primary focus has always been geared towards the empowerment of these communities economically in order to address the thorny issue of poverty and social exclusion.

However, in the recent past these rural places have continued to go through a series of transformations in a number of ways. One such way through which this change has been witnessed is in terms of transformations of agricultural lands. Within the past few years farming in both the North and South parts of England has been obliterated. At the same time, the few remaining ones have continued to provide decreasing opportunities for the rural jobs. How significant are these transformations and what are the available options of reversing this trend' It is imperative to note that this fundamental question can only be answered through historical analysis of the said transformation in the first place.

In a nutshell, such analysis bring to the fore another important aspect of rural differentiation within these regions of England. By so doing, it thus reveals the impacts of this complex process of transformation or change. The ultimate collapse of intensive agriculture in both the Southern and Northern parts of England began in the late 1950s'. Prior to this time, residual agricultural farms prevailed in a few selected areas although without much significance to the local communities. However, a couple years later, rapid population growth alongside a conglomeration of other factors in these regions led to remarkable diminishing access to the farming lands which in turn initiated the gradual disappearance of agricultural lands.

Different regions of rural England experienced this trend in unique ways although radical transformations were witnessed in regions which were densely populated. In these regions the high population pressure greatly hampered the access to viable areas for both crop and dairy farming.