ABSTRACT:

Although rural development clearly denotes a process aimed at developing the rural landscape to an urban form, programmes aimed at improving symptoms of the rural landscape have been mistaken for rural development programmes. Since more than 70 percent of the population of developing countries live in rural areas with agriculture as their major economic activity, agricultural production function has wrongly been considered as a strategy for rural development But low agricultural production, low rural incomes, and poor living conditions in rural areas are symptoms of undeveloped rural landscape. Thus, the application of agricultural production function as a strategy to improve agricultural production, increased rural Income and poor standard of living will never produce positive results. This paper attempts to make a clear distinction between rural development programmes and rural improvement programmes, and gives reasons why only rural development programmes can lead to rapid and sustainable development in developing countries.