A perusal of near 300 articles making up the editorial work of the Journal of Rural Cooperation throughout the years 1979-2005 allows to track down a sequence of significant trends. These start with a number of issues that we will denote as part of a “passé” agenda, through a re-thinking of rural society as a “weak” society and a shift, by rural cooperatives, from traditional roles to new global challenges, mainly caused by the economic global market and its consequent competitive drive. Given the importance of the Kibbutz as a phenomenon that lay at the core of the concept of “rural cooperative community”, a short section in this overview will be devoted to the role played by the kibbutz in the editorial endeavor of the JRC. In what follows, we present major signposts of change in the contents of the JRC, based on the editorials of special thematic issues and a selection of articles herein.