The essences of sustainable rural development, its social and economic potential are described. It is proposed to consider a balanced development of rural areas as development, which met for the growing material and spiritual needs of the rural population based on scientifically-based coordination of cost-effective and environmentally acceptable use of social and economic potential of rural areas; socio-economic potential of sustainable rural development - as an expression of the total available capacity and available resources fully implemented to ensure the sustainable development of rural areas; production potential of rural areas - as a total annual economic impact of existing and intended use of the available productive resources of rural areas in terms of consistency of social and economic needs of the population with the requirements for environmentally sustainable nature. It is shown that in the absence of an effective system of monitoring socio-economic development of rural areas, the algorithm methods of assessing its production potential should be based on consideration of the nature of the production potential; availability, reliability and completeness of existing information resources, thus providing the possibility of its use and application objectivity and adequacy of the evaluation results. Approaches to the assessment of the productive potential of rural areas with regard to multifunctionary of its structure are based. One of which provides, inter alia, the establishing of total annual economic benefit in the form of total annual rental income of target appropriate land use designation as a territorial basis, natural resources, means of production to make economic activities that are located within the rural area. A procedure for the assessment of production potential of rural areas, taking into account the specific formation of rental income in using of agricultural and non-agricultural purposes are proposed. In particular, it is specified that as of Jan. 1, 2014 estimated annual rental income on individual agricultural land in Lviv region amounted to UAH per 1 hectare: arable land - 538.25, perennial plants - 398.93, hayfields - 128.29, pastures - 118 69. The peculiarities of data resources of the State Land Cadastre to assess the production potential of rural areas are highlighted. Directions of using the assessment results in order to ensure sustainable rural development are outlined. It is used for monitoring and forecasting changes under the influence of economic activity; development of scientifically based recommendations for the implementation of more efficient use of current and future social and economic potential of rural areas in general. 

rural areas, sustainable development, production potential of rural territories, targeted land use, rental income, methods of assessing