This book focuses on U.S. policy that affects rural people and provides an understanding of the problems facing rural America, looking at the crucial issues of employment, demographics, environment, technology, and the global impacts of national and international policies.

Foreword -- Critical Times for Rural America: The Challenge for Rural Policy in the 1990s -- Rural America and the Industrial Policy Debate -- Financing Rural Businesses -- Rural Banking -- Small Businesses -- Issues Facing Agricultural Policy -- Agricultural Labor -- The Rural Poor: The Past As Prologue -- Work and Poverty in Rural America -- Meeting Rural Family Needs -- The Aged in Rural America -- Health Care in Rural America -- Rural Education -- American Indian Development Policies -- The Doubly Jeopardized: Nonmetropolitan Blacks and Mexicans -- Capacity Building and Rural Government Adaptation to Population Change -- Rural Transportation -- Family Planning and Fertility in International Context -- Water Quality and Agriculture -- Soil Conservation -- Farmland Tenure Policy -- Forest Resource Policy -- The Waste Management Problem -- Telematics and Rural Development -- Rethinking Biotechnology Policy -- International Development -- A Rural Policy Agenda for the 1990s