From rural poverty to rural development

Abstract

This paper points to the vicious circle that developed in the rural area, where poverty breeds poverty. Most farm households are poor, and poverty has taken them away from modern, forwardlooking economy to primitive, subsistence farming. This obsolete mode of production that leads nowhere cannot but perpetuate the poverty of those employed in this activity. It is difficult to take the rural poor out of poverty, first of all because there are many of them, there are 4.2 million out of 10 million rural inhabitants. Because of poverty, rural markets are weak: there are few buyers of farm inputs required by modern farming, and there are few sellers of farm output. Rural Romania does not make the transition to a market economy: it remains frozen in a natural, subsistence economy. And because there are few buyers and sellers in rural area, the businesses in industries, trade or services are likewise.