premise: The increasing fragility of the rural economy will be the biggest challenge facing country communities over the next ten years. Agriculture, which accounts for a quarter of rural job, is in decline. Tourism provides no more than half this number of job. The rural manufacturing sector, however, has grown over last ten years. Despite this, it still employs fewer than one in twenty people living in rural area, and is threatened by companies based in industrial areas, which benefit from access to a larger skilled workforce and better transportation networks.
hypothesis: Industries based in rural areas benefit from better transport links.