Both bilateral and multilateral donors attach considerable importance to development cooperation that seeks to achieve a lasting and selfsustaining improvement in the living conditions of the poor majority of the developing countries’ rural population. It is generally agreed that only wide-ranging agricultural and rural development will eliminate the mass poverty which is particularly prevalent in the rural areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America. However, the controversy over both the means to this end and the resources to be used continues, although some meeting of the minds has recently been observed. The current debate is characterized by the following pairs of opposites: accelerated economic growth versus general social development; effective promotion of local and regional projects versus country-wide programmes at sectoral and macro level; complex, integrated projects versus sectoral programmes geared to specific target groups; the strengthening of government organizational structures versus promotion of the self-organization of the beneficiaries; the supply orientation of public services versus demand orientation; blueprint planning versus open planning processes. This debate dominates the search for an appropriate combination of different policies and instruments for poverty-oriented rural development. This study has been made against the background of the current debate, to which it also seeks to make a contribution