That was partly because more land was taken into cultivation, but also because yields per hectare rose by some 17% over this period, according to the Rural Society, a farmers' lobby.

ECONOMIST: Use your brains

Ernesto Ambrosetti, an economist at the Rural Society, the main farmers' lobby, points out that they turned to soya partly as the safest bet during Argentina's recent political and economic turmoil.

ECONOMIST: Pros and cons of the soya boom

The Rural Doctors Conference is organised by Montgomeryshire Medical Society and the Institute of Rural Health (IRH), and runs for three days.

BBC: Stressed doctor - photo posed by model

Her suicide, says Dr Phillips, was due not to depression but to the conventions of rural Chinese society.

ECONOMIST: China

Among the MFIs' biggest critics is Budithi Rajsekhar, boss of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, an arm of the state government formed in 2000 to run its own microcredit programme.

ECONOMIST: Banyan

Twenty cases of female infanticide, in which the mothers were punished, have been documented by a Madurai-based non-governmental organisation, the Society for Integrated Rural Development.

BBC: India rights campaign for infanticide mothers

Firsthand, I saw the boom transform a rural, working poor society into a confident, aspirational nation.

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If a country passes from a rural to an urban society then the existence of allergies escalates.

BBC: NEWS | Health | Rise in multiple allergy patients

The state historical society petitions for a skeleton staff of 16 to keep its artefacts secure and the animals on a rural property fed.

ECONOMIST: A state government runs out of money. Will the Feds be next?

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Medway Council and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England were among the organisations who campaigned against an airport at Cliffe.

BBC: Airport ruling celebrated