Methodological approaches to the assessment of rural areas as a multifunctional ecological and socio-economic system

The article proves that the state of the multifunctional ecological and socio-economic system of a particular rural territory is inseparable from the level of agriculture development, which determines the need for a detailed study of each of its functions. The authors suggest an original methodology of assessment of the rural areas state in terms of the functional-structural and the systemic purpose-based approaches. The methodology is based on the algorithm for building an index of multifunctional development of an agricultural territory.