Agric. Econ. - Czech, X:X | DOI: 10.17221/408/2025-AGRICECON

Does size matter? The non-linear relationship between farm size and economic viability in Czech agricultureOriginal Paper

Radek Zdeněk ORCID..., Jana Lososová ORCID..., Petr Zeman ORCID...

Department of Accounting and Finance, Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

This paper analyses the economic viability of Czech farms between 2015–2023 and examines the non-linear relationship between farm size and viability. Farm viability is measured using the Farm Economic Viability (FEV) indicator, adapted from the Modified Farm Net Value Added approach to account for constraints in accounting-based data. The analysis covers 1 443–2 211 farms annually, representing 44–65% of the utilised agricultural land area (UAA) in Czechia. Farms are classified by both UAA and by economic size. The results show that the share of economically viable farms ranged from 16.6% to 46.9%, with substantial year-to-year variability driven by market and policy conditions. Farms up to 150 ha exhibit higher average FEV values, whereas farms above 900 ha show below-average viability. In contrast, classification by economic size indicates higher viability among large farms, while small and medium-sized farms remain the most vulnerable. The predictive ability of the IN99 model is assessed using ROC (receiver operating characteristic) analysis; after modification, the optimised model achieves an AUC (area under the ROC curve) of 0.90 and a hit ratio of 83.3%. The findings confirm that farm size effects on viability depend critically on the chosen size definition and that accounting-based financial ratios can reliably predict farm economic viability.

Keywords: accounting data; agricultural enterprises; discriminant analysis; opportunity costs; predictive modelling; subsidy policy

Received: September 30, 2025; Revised: May 18, 2026; Accepted: May 21, 2026; Prepublished online: September 29, 2026