Tapping into Rural Regions

Tapping into Rural Regions

I’m KayDee Gilkey with today’s Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

Spanning a 12 year period between 1995 and 2007 the report promoting growth in all regions looked at why many rural areas were growing faster than urban areas.

Enrique Garcilazo is with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which wrote the report. He says the report finds that contrary to popular perception, rural areas are sometimes more efficient and can generate growth more easily than some highly populated areas.

Garcilazo: “One is human capital, that is the biggest factor and the most robust in our analysis and specifically it’s reducing the proportion of low skilled people in the work force as well as putting more highly skilled people in these areas.

The report shows investments in rural areas are vital for the country’s national economic growth which unfortunately isn’t the where development priorities are usually spent.

Garcilazo: “This is a striking results for some of the policy makers that actually do the reverse. They try and allocate infrastructure investments where you have congestion, where you have a lot of commuting.”

But the report finds that land that is open is much more suitable for growth. Garcilzo adds that often its large cities that demonstrate inefficiencies.

Garcilazo: “Rather than the reverse that size, organization and conglomeration effects bring efficiencies. What the data shows is quite the contrary that smaller places appear to be more efficient drivers of growth.”