While farm commodity issues may occupy center stage in policy discussions of the periodic omnibus farm bills, rural community and economic development are also topics of congressional concern and a separate title within the farm bill. Since 1973, omnibus farm bills have included a rural development title. The most recent is Title VI of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 ( P.L. 110-246 ). Positioning rural areas to better compete in a global economic environment is one of the key issues framing the current debate about the future of rural America. When agricultural production and related businesses dominated rural economies, policies that strengthened and improved agriculture tended to strengthen and improve the well-being of most of America's small communities and rural residents. As the strength of this linkage has declined, the need for new sources of rural economic development has become more apparent to policymakers and rural development practitioners. Congressional interest in rural policy encompasses a wide range of issues, including agriculture, forestry, and mining, community infrastructure, natural resource conservation and management, medical care, bioenergy and economic development. Current challenges to and reform of existing federal rural policies are evolving in an environment of increasing concern about economic competitiveness, a shift away from agriculture toward manufacturing and services, new federal political strategies, and the emergence of new political interests in farm bill deliberations. A changing rural America is also producing pressures for different policies and raising new questions about what Congress's role should be in shaping rural policy. Both agriculture and manufacturing issues are increasingly seen as elements of global and regional restructuring, which have significant implications for rural areas, especially those areas where these production sectors remain dominant. Today, nearly 90% of total farm household income comes from off-farm sources. Manufacturing now accounts for about 25% of rural private sector earnings and about 12% of all rural jobs. The service sector, as with the U.S. domestic economy as a whole, now dominates the rural labor market, although the rural service sector differs from the metropolitan service sector in terms of job categories, skills, and wages. The rural development title of farm bills generally supports (1) the infrastructure of rural areas, with traditional assistance for housing, electrical generation and transmission, water and wastewater, and community capacity, (2) agricultural development, and (3) rural business creation and expansion. More recently, policymakers have pushed for programs that support innovative and alternative business development, and innovative mechanisms to finance it. Pressure for such alternative approaches is expected to continue as policymakers recognize the changing structure of agriculture and the great diversity among rural communities, with some rural areas growing and prospering, and others falling further behind as their primary industries (including agriculture) either decline or adapt to a global economy. Such adaptation and dislocation over the past decade has often meant fewer rural employment opportunities and significant population outmigration for many rural communities. To emphasize the importance of agricultural production in the local economies that still characterize many rural areas, legislative support for technologies to help farmers with planting decisions and local investments in industries that will add value to their products have become important aspects of rural development policy. Research is also increasingly focused on improvements in agricultural waste management and environmental protections. Traditional strategies, notably value-added agriculture (e.g., regional food processing plants, cooperatives, organic farming, biofuels) are being promoted by many in the farm sector. While holding promise for agriculture and surrounding communities, there remain limits on the extent to which agriculture and other mature industries can become a significant engine for renewed rural economic prosperity. While commodity policy dominates much of the debate and most of the funding, production agriculture remains a comparatively small and shrinking part of the rural economy, with less than 8% of the rural population employed in agriculture. There is growing recognition that farmers in many rural areas depend more on a healthy rural economy than the rural economy is dependent on farmers for its vitality. The need to strengthen the capacity of rural areas more generally to compete in a global economy is becoming more widely appreciated as the limitations of commodity subsidies, peripheral manufacturing, and physical infrastructure as mainstays of rural development policy become more obvious. Emerging policy issues surround the question of whether current farm policies, which rely heavily on commodity support payments and subsidies to a few production sectors, help, hinder, or have little impact on the future development of economically viable rural communities. Rural manufacturing, which tends to be lower-skilled and lower-waged, is also undergoing restructuring with the loss of manufacturing to foreign competition. While transformation to a service economy continues in rural America, service employment in many rural areas tends to be in lower-wage personal services rather than business and producer services. Continuing population and economic decline in many farming and rural areas is compelling policymakers and rural areas to create new sources of competitive advantage, innovative ways of providing public services to sparse populations, and new ways of integrating agriculture into changing rural economies. More recently, economic development efforts in some areas have targeted various entrepreneurial strategies and microenterprise development. These approaches attempt to capitalize on a particular area's distinctive social, economic, and environmental assets and advantages to build endogenously on existing local and regional strengths. Developing a local and regional entrepreneurial culture seems to be an important approach in these efforts' successes. Linking public and private sources to build "business incubators" is a common strategy, as is developing new commercial ties with area colleges and universities. Communities are also applying such entrepreneurial energy to making their local governments, schools, and hospitals more efficient through, for example, telecommunication innovations. The trends noted above suggest a range of issues that are important in shaping the provisions of the rural development title of the 2008: Conservation and environmental restoration as rural employment opportunities; Stemming rural population out-migration; Vertical integration and coordination of agriculture into supply networks and their implication for rural areas; Developing rural entrepreneurial capacity; Rebuilding an aging rural physical infrastructure; Public service delivery innovations in sparsely populated areas; Increasing suburbanization and the conflicts between agriculture and suburban development; Human capital deficiencies in rural areas; Regional-based efforts for economic development. Connecting businesses and rural communities with broadband telecommunications infrastructure The rural development title of the 2008 farm bill has taken shape against this backdrop of shifts in the rural economy, widespread and long-term poverty in some rural areas, outmigration in other rural areas, dwindling economic opportunity in rural areas, gaps in critical infrastructure, and a growing appreciation in many quarters of the limits of existing rural development programs to respond to the great diversity of rural places and socioeconomic circumstances. Such issues give rise to several policy relevant questions. How effective are current federal programs in improving the competitive position of rural areas? Can broad-based federal rural programs be better targeted to the critical needs of particular rural areas? How might regional funding approaches be better integrated into federal policy for rural areas? How can federal policies better assist entrepreneurial efforts in rural communities? How might the biofuels emphasis in the upcoming farm bill be connected to rural development programs? More than 88 programs administered by 16 different federal agencies target rural economic development. The Rural Development Policy Act of 1980 ( P.L. 96-355 ), however, named USDA as the lead federal agency for rural development. USDA administers most of the existing rural development programs and has the highest average of program funds going directly to rural counties (approximately 50%). Three agencies are responsible for USDA's rural development mission area: the Rural Housing Service (RHS), the Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBS), and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS). An Office of Community Development provides community development support through Rural Development's field offices. It is important to note that most loan and grant programs administered by USDA Rural Development are funded through annual (discretionary) appropriations. The rural development title of omnibus farm bills does not address every program administered by the three USDA mission agencies. Many of these programs are "permanently" authorized, often through amendments to the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act of 1972 (the ConAct, P.L. 87-128) or the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 and are funded through annual appropriations. The 1996 farm bill ( P.L. 104-127 ) authorized the first provision in the rural development title funded by mandatory spending, the Fund for Rural America, which expired in 2002. The 2002 farm bill ( P.L. 107-171 ) authorized six new programs supported through mandatory spending. Mandatory funding for most of these programs, however, was largely blocked by appropriators between 2002 and 2007. Several of the programs were funded instead through discretionary appropriations, although in amounts less than the original authorization. The 2008 farm bill has several provisions supported by mandatory spending, although in lesser amounts than were proposed in the House and Senate-passed versions of the farm bill. Several programs authorized in the 2002 farm bill are reauthorized in the two bills. The Appendix provides a complete side-by-side comparison of current law with the provisions in the House and Senate bills and the enacted bill. Unlike the 2002 farm bill, the rural development provisions of P.L. 110-246 contain only three programs with mandatory funding: Value-Added Product Grants ($15 million); the Microenterprise Assistance Program ($15 million); and a one-time funding of pending water and waste water projects ($120 million). Several programs that were authorized to receive mandatory funding in the 2002 farm bill were reauthorized in P.L. 110-246 with discretionary funding (e.g., the Rural Strategic Investment Program and the Rural Firefighters and Emergency Medical Personnel Program). Concerns about how effectively USDA targets its rural development loan and grant assistance have been a recurring consideration by policymakers and rural development practitioners. The general concern is that rural development funding may not be targeted to the neediest rural communities because of the way rural is defined. Section 6018 directs the Secretary to assess the varying definitions of "rural" used by USDA and to describe the effects these different definitions have on USDA Rural Development programs.