Rural Infrastructure

Agricultural and rural non-farm growth both depend heavily on the physical and financial infrastructure available in rural areas. Four types of rural infrastructure are usually highlighted as preconditions for rural development.

Rural roads connect villages to markets, input suppliers and processing centres — without reliable roads, perishable produce cannot reach markets in time and the benefits of any market or price improvement are difficult to realise on the ground.

Rural electrification supports irrigation (through electric pumpsets), rural agro-processing and small industry, and more broadly improves the quality of rural life and enables non-farm economic activity that depends on a power supply.

Irrigation reduces farmers' dependence on the timing and adequacy of rainfall, allows multiple cropping in a year, and — as the Green Revolution experience made clear — is often the single infrastructural precondition on which the benefits of improved seeds and fertiliser actually depend.

Rural banking and credit access — covered in more detail above — is itself a form of infrastructure, since without a nearby bank branch or credit institution, farmers and rural non-farm entrepreneurs alike fall back on more expensive and less transparent informal credit. …