Over the past five years the debate on rural non-farm income has focused on:
• The rising contribution of non-farm income to rural livelihoods (particularly of the poor);
• How far such changes affect the poor, especially in terms of poverty, vulnerability and inequality;
• What makes non-farm growth pro-poor, and whether small-scale or large-scale non-farm enterprise development is preferable;
• The role of agriculture in non-farm growth, and the scale and magnitude of such linkages;
• The potential for rural sectors to act as growth engines in their own right, and how efficiency can be improved by clustering and sub-contracting;
• The cost and benefits of promoting a rural non-farm economy, especially in relation to decentralised patterns of national economic growth.