We have started to carry out series of investigations on the relationship between agricultural and regional development in order to see whether in those countries – where agriculture plays important role in the economy at the moment – this tendency must be maintained or not. How can agriculture contribute efficiently to the GDP growth and to the increase of the standard of living? Can/should we recommend any other development alternatives in those countries or agriculture must be further developed? We wanted to overview what tendencies can be observed in the case of agricultural product prices and whether those tendencies, i.e. the increasing prices, endanger the food supply and whether they have close relation with the appearance of alternative energy sources. We also intended to find out how we can link and harmonize the regional and rural development measures of the EU and the objectives of the CAP especially in those regions which are lagging behind. In this study we tried to summarize the major facts and conclusions of the first phase of these researches, focusing on primarily the agricultural tendencies in the world and in the EU, which can serve as a good basis for further analyses to set such aims which serve both regional and rural development.