Rurality bites: The social and environmental transformation of rural Australia

Current agricultural and rural policy in Australia, among governments and major industry groups alike, is a recipe for continued rural decline and the increasing dominance of agriculture by global agribusiness. Indeed, so is a retreat to the past. Rurality Bites is the first comprehensive book on the social and environmental transformation sweeping rural Australia at the beginning of the 21st century. Rurality Bites proposes that the society of the future in rural Australia is an increasingly knowledge intensive one and the concerns, issues and identities of these Australians must be addressed if a positive future is to be realised. In this book, it is apparent that the seeds of a new apprach - one that acknowledges the increasingly globalised context for all activity, but also builds social and natural capital locally - have already been sown. The issue now is to nurture them and ensure that they allow for new enterprises, forms of knowledge, types of community service and forms of governance to develop, and evolve, in the face of ever shifting circumstances.