USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has recently released the _Agricultural Fact Book 1996_ . Provided by the USDA Office of Communications, it offers basic facts about many aspects of U.S. agriculture, including the U.S. farm sector, the structure of U.S. agriculture, and rural America. It contains short entries and brief statistical breakdowns, and is meant to be used as a ready...

In the past several decades, a number of policy institutes and think-tanks have been formed to open a substantial dialogue about issues affecting rural communities. The Rural Policy Research Institute is one of these organizations, and involves scientists and policy analysts from Iowa State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Nebraska and other affiliated institutions. The...

The Rural Development Briefing Room is new to the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) site (described in the July 2, 1998 Scout Report for Business & Economics). Easy access to non-metropolitan information is available including Rural-Urban Continuum Codes, Urban Influence Codes, Typology Codes, links to Rural Development Perspectives and Rural Conditions and Trends, and metro-nonmetro labor...