KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a visit to Kansas City, Mo., he would ask the White House Rural Council to try to reduce the number of federal government definitions ...

A proposed definition of the term rural submitted by the Department of Agriculture to Congress last month could have broad implications for small towns across America - and not everyone is happy about ...

[imgbelt img=yolo.jpg]Proposed changes in how the USDA defines eligibility for its development programs will improve the department’s service to rural communities, says the deputy undersecretary in ...

Organizations that wish to weigh in on a proposal to change one of the federal government’s key definitions of rural have until Friday, March 19, to file comments. The proposed change would raise the ...

How do you know if you live in the city or the country? For some, any place without a Whole Foods is rural. For others, a stoplight is a harbinger of urban sprawl. The federal government has more than ...

The small town of Houston, Missouri, is off the beaten path and has only 2,500 residents, but it still doesn't meet the definition of "rural" in some federal programs. Small towns far from big cities ...

When is an unincorporated town more rural than urban? In Wisconsin, the answer may depend on whether one lives in Rib Mountain, a suburb of Wausau with a population of just under 7,000 – or Milwaukee, ...

The question before us seems simple enough. Yet the answer is a bit more elusive than it may appear at first glance. At its ...