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Many companies depend on debt sources; they use them to finance their needs. Bank loans are the main debt sources to which companies have access. However, financing only with this source is associated with many risks. The paper’s main goal is to assess and quantify the indebtedness of wineries in Slovakia for 2013–2021 through individual debt ratios. The influence of financial leverage on return on equity (ROE) was tested. The data were drawn from the Register of Financial Statements. From the point of view of the total debt ratio, wineries show values higher than 65%. The presence of short-term debts, especially short-term liabilities, prevailed. The average share of equity reached a very low value of 11%. The average share of bank loans on financing operating activities was very low at the level of 8.53%. The return on assets (ROA) was lower than the cost of debt in most wineries, which means that increasing indebtedness had a negative effect on ROE.

Agroecosystems provide a number of ecosystem services that are essential to human well-being.  The valuation of these services by stakeholders offers important information that can be used to manage them more efficiently. In agroecosystems, individual stakeholder preferences can be heterogeneous and even opposing. This paper puts forward a novel analytical framework based on game theory to integrate the valuation of ecosystem services by different stakeholders into agroecosystem management. To illustrate it, the agricultural region of Los Vélez (south-eastern Spain) is used and three game modalities are applied (prisoner’s dilemma, common-pool resource game and battle of the sexes). Results indicate that the use of game theory contributes to more effective conflict resolution between stakeholders with different interests and priorities, making it easier to reach consensus on optimal management strategies. This approach can guide policymakers in the design and implementation of socially accepted agroecosystem management policies.

Innovation is the driver of sustainable business development and is essential to promote high quality econo-mic development in the country. Are more bank loans better for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) innovation? Therefore, based on mixed cross-sectional data of county sweet potato processing enterprises, this study applied the econometric model to explore the impact of bank loans on county agrifood SMEs innovation. We find that there is an 'inverted U-shaped' relationship between bank loans and county agrifood SMEs innovation. The analysis of the mechanism shows that bank loans can not only alleviate the problem of innovation financing constraints for agrifood SMEs, but also provide financial support for the innovation activities of agrifood SMEs as a result of trade openness. This study has important practical implications for promoting county agrifood SMEs innovation in China and promoting high-quality county economic development.

Farmland transfer is a practical need for China to achieve agricultural mechanisation and modernisation, and also an important way for farmers to optimise their family resource allocation. The existing studies ignore the impact of farmland transfer on the environment, especially carbon emissions. The practical significance of this paper lies in exploring the likely mechanisms driving the effect of the farmland transfer on agricultural carbon emissions from a microeconomic perspective using data from rural households, based on the heterogeneity of land management scale. Results show: (i) Land transfer impacts carbon emissions differently. Land transfer of small-scale farmers increases carbon emissions, while large-scale farmers reduce them. The threshold value of land management scale is 1 ha. (ii) The impact mechanisms are water-saving technology adoption and input of fertilizers and pesticides. Small-scale farmers increase fertiliser and pesticide input after land transfer, increasing carbon emissions. Large-scale farmers mostly reduce irrigation electricity consumption, as well as fertilizer and pesticide input, thus reducing agricultural carbon emissions. In conclusion, it is recommended to guide farmers to expand farmland transfer scale through subsidy policies; guide small-scale farmers' green agricultural production behaviours; and increase the adoption rate of water-saving technologies.

Assessing the agricultural sustainability of farms is challenging, since it involves various aspects that can change over time and differ by location. This paper develops a composite index to evaluate the sustainability of cereal farming in Catalonia, Spain. Using factor analysis, we integrate 21 indicators across economic, environmental, and social dimensions based on the Farm Accountancy Data Network (2016–2021). The results show sustainability scores ranging from 2 to 5, with larger economic s farms outperforming smaller ones by 0.4 points. Five key factors explain the variance in sustainability across farms, with profitability, benefit-cost ratio, and agri-footprint carrying the highest weights. In addition, our empirical findings indicate that subsidy dependence negatively affects the sustainability of farms, while modernisation and environmental management improvements enhance farm performance. This suggests a need for size-specific policy interventions focusing on smallholder management capacity and broader climate adaptation strategies. The methodology could offer a practical tool for monitoring sustainability progress in Mediterranean cereal production systems, and for identifying possible sources of improvements with regard to more sustainable agricultural practices.

The intensification of agricultural practices in Bangladesh has caused significant environmental challenges. This has also undermined farmers' economic sustainability, mainly due to the excessive use of subsidised chemical fertilisers. To address these issues and align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Bangladesh has prioritised the adoption of sustainable farming practices, including the recommended fertiliser application (RFA). However, whether the adoption of RFA ensures economic sustainability remains uncertain. This study evaluates how the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute's (BRRI) proposed RFA affects fertiliser use and cost-efficiency. Drawing on five years (2017–2021) of panel data from 2 025 households across three acidic soil regions in Dinajpur, the findings reveal that RFA adoption reduces fertiliser use by 12% while improving cost efficiency by 4.9–5.1%. These results highlight the potential of RFA to mitigate environmental degradation while enhancing economic outcomes, thereby supporting the SDG agenda. In light of these benefits, the study offers key insights for policymakers and development practitioners, emphasising the need for targeted interventions to accelerate RFA adoption and promote sustainable agriculture.

The promotion of sustainable food productivity through innovative technologies remains a central priority in economic development, attracting increasing attention from scholars, policymakers, and industry stakeholders. With the continuing rise in global food demand, resource-efficient solutions are essential to ensuring long-term agricultural growth and stability in food production. This study examines the impact of green finance, agricultural innovation, digital technology, trade openness, and climate change on food production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) and the generalised method of moments (GMM), it analyses a balanced panel dataset covering 46 SSA countries from 2001 to 2023. The findings highlight the positive influence of green finance, agricultural innovation, and digital technology in enhancing food production, particularly in lower production sectors, suggesting important bidirectional policy implications. Trade openness is found to promote agricultural growth but exhibits diminishing effects at higher levels of productivity, indicating the relevance of a unidirectional policy focus. In contrast, climate change has a negative effect on food production. The study also identifies key mediation pathways, including green finance stimulating research and development, digital technology improving agricultural credit and farmers' education, and trade openness attracting foreign direct investment. These results emphasise the importance of integrated policy frameworks that combine financial support, technological advancement, and trade openness to promote sustainable agricultural growth and strengthen food security across SSA.

Farmers, often vulnerable within the agricultural supply chain, frequently encounter difficulties accessing and affording loans. This study introduces an innovative credit risk evaluation framework for farmers tailored to the agricultural supply chain. It includes three key aspects: farmers’ credit characteristics, the operational status of the agricultural supply chain, and overall credit conditions. Initially, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to assign weight coefficients to indicators. Then, the Elimination et Choix Traduisant la Réalité III (ELECTRE III) model was employed to determine farmers’ credit ratings. To demonstrate the impact of the agricultural supply chain on microfinance, the model’s effectiveness was then tested with 398 microfinance survey responses from Fuping County (World Dairy Goat Industry Development Demonstration Zone), Shaanxi Province, China, and its accuracy was further verified using BP neural network analysis. The results demonstrated the model’s proficiency in assessing farmers’ credit levels within the agricultural supply chain, which can aid in the resolution of various credit assessment and rating challenges. Furthermore, this study offers valuable insights into the integration of multi-criteria decision-making and machine-learning methods.

This study comprehensively examines multifaceted risk factors influencing wheat production among Turkish farmers, aiming to deepen understanding of how these factors shape farmers’ perceptions and decision-making processes. Utilising Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), we analysed the interplay of climate-related issues (F1), market dynamics (F2), and external events (F3), like COVID-19 and wars, alongside socio-demographic factors such as education, income, and land ownership. Findings revealed that higher education and increased agricultural income reduced price-related risks while expanding wheat cultivation areas heightened risk perceptions. Farmers in irrigated regions prioritised cyclical risks, whereas those in dry areas perceived climatic risks as more severe. Capital-intensive practices and storage facilities mitigate climate change and market variability risks, with committed wheat producers showing lower climate change risk perceptions. External factors like the Russian-Ukrainian war and the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impact irrigated area farmers. This study contributes to the existing literature by using empirical evidence from Turkish wheat farming to explore diverse risk perceptions, employing SEM to unravel complex risk factors and decision-making processes, thereby offering new insights for future agricultural risk management research.

In recent years, the external shock represented by COVID-19 has caused significant fluctuations in global corn prices. Based on the weekly data on international corn prices from 2020 to 2023, this paper constructs autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) class and time-varying parameter – vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) models. After analysing the characteristics of corn price fluctuations, it further analyses the influence of external uncertainties such as COVID-19, international finance, the corn futures market, and international exports of corn on corn price fluctuations. The results show that international corn price fluctuations always have significant asymmetry. Nevertheless, the influence of past changes on the future will gradually disappear, and the corn market is not characterised by high risk and high return because of the phenomenon of flat or declining absolute returns during the periods of high volatility. All the selected external shocks also have a time-varying impact on corn price fluctuations, and there are differences in the impact size, impact direction, and impact duration. The external shocks led by COVID-19 had a transmission effect on other factors and then affected corn price fluctuations.

This study uses micro-financial data to examine the efficiency of agricultural enterprises in Germany and its neighbouring countries. The aim of the study is to introduce a model for the agricultural sector and conduct an efficiency analysis using these data, interpreting the results with specific knowledge in the management of an agriculture company. Both technical and allocative efficiencies were determined, and the companies were ranked. Possible correlations between company size, measured by turnover, and the determined efficiency were analysed. At present, there is a lack of studies in the agricultural sector with high aggregated financial data, which are the basis and necessity for well-founded decision support to increase efficiency. The data envelopment analysis method was used, as a non-parametric procedure from operations research and economics field. Both the constant returns to scale (CCR) and variable returns to scale (BCC) models were used to calculate the efficiency values. The results showed that large and very large companies achieved the highest levels of efficiency. Interestingly, very large companies lost efficiency compared to large companies, suggesting that the optimal efficiency level lies with the latter. Furthermore, the Netherlands was the absolute efficiency leader, while the other countries achieved similar lower efficiencies. This study contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive efficiency analysis in the agricultural sector based on financial data, thus offering a basis for future studies and political decisions.

Agriculture's stable development is vital to the national economy, and its vulnerability justifies fiscal support. On the basis of data from the China Family Panel Studies from 2012 to 2022, this study examines how fiscal allocation affects agricultural production, particularly rural households' grain-growing enthusiasm and their productive income. Results show that public expenditure significantly boosts agricultural production, supported by ordered probit and ordinary least squares fixed effect models and confirmed in robustness tests. Mechanistic tests indicate that agricultural public expenditure promotes agricultural production by improving agricultural technical levels, enhancing production services, and expanding the agricultural scale. Heterogeneity analysis shows that agricultural public expenditure has a stronger effect on grain-growing enthusiasm among low-educated rural households and on productive income in major grain production areas. It also has a stronger effect on productive income for rural households with emerging and prime-aged farmers, in nonmajor grain production areas, and those with high educational attainment. The research offers empirical insights for exploring ways to achieve the 'dual goals' of food security and poverty alleviation.

Global warming has altered regional temperatures and precipitation, potentially leading to deviations from planned biofuel production and emission-reduction targets. This study revisits the market equilibrium of agricultural and biofuel production under climate risk, using updated IPCC projections. It employs a two-stage stochastic programming model to examine the overall effect of climate change on Taiwan's biofuel production. The results indicate that biofuel production depends on the level of climate impact and emission prices. In addition, total input use is generally between 2.79 and 4.72 million tonnes. The higher the gasoline price, the sooner the producer will exhaust its production capacity. While Taiwan could sustain biofuel production when gasoline and emission prices are high, a substantial land-use change would occur. Approximately 74 500–81 900 hectares of idle land will return to production. However, the increase in cropland supply may not lead to biofuel expansion, as it has a limited ability to offset emissions.

Agricultural informatisation (AgI) is hailed as a 'game-changer' for farmers worldwide, even as climate change increases agriculture's vulnerability to climatic risks and threatens sustainable agrifood production. While AgI aspires to help alleviate hunger and poverty in smallholder farm households by improving on-farm productivity through the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs), limited empirical evidence exists on the AgI–SAPs nexus, particularly under severe environmental stress such as drought. We analysed data from a survey of maize farmers in central Zambia – a country exemplifying the impact of severe drought, declared a national emergency and disaster – to explore whether and how AgI can optimise SAP adoption and improve crop yields. Given the potential endogeneity of AgI adoption, we employed a recursive bivariate probit (RBP) and endogenous-treatment regression (ETR) to estimate the former and the latter, respectively. We focused on adoption portfolios of three AgI tools – radio, television and mobile phones – and five SAPs: minimum tillage, residue retention, planting basins, improved seed varieties and irrigation. The results reveal that AgI adoption significantly influences SAP adoption, with varying impacts across different AgI and SAP portfolios. Importantly, the adoption of productivity-enhancing SAPs, particularly improved seed and drip irrigation, produced the largest yield effects (124.46 g/capita/day) for AgI adopters. This increase potentially contributes 43.21% towards daily maize-supply quantity, which is crucial for helping households meet the minimum recommended daily caloric intake. The study therefore underscores that AgI plays a critical role in improving yields through SAP adoption, serving as a compelling pathway for agricultural resilience, especially under adverse climatic conditions. These insights align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those aimed at zero hunger, climate action and poverty alleviation, which advocate re-thinking and transforming food-production strategies.

The aim of the paper is to examine the resilience of Czech agricultural enterprises through the perceptions of farm managers and to assess the areas where these businesses perceive themselves as resilient and where they feel vulnerable. The analysis is based on data from a survey conducted by the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information (IAEI) in June 2022, involving 521 Czech agricultural managers. The study focuses on six key areas: climate change and its impacts, agricultural inputs, labour force, market outlets, land prices and availability, and changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Across all areas, managers reported that businesses were more frequently vulnerable than resilient, particularly in relation to agricultural inputs and climate change. The results also highlight differences in the perception of resilience across enterprises of varying sizes, with significant variation noted in how changes to the CAP were viewed. Contrary to the common belief that larger enterprises are more resilient, the survey found that Czech medium-sized and large enterprises (with 200 hectares or more of agricultural land) were more frequently perceived as vulnerable.

In the contemporary era, organisations have embraced the internet as a platform through which they disseminate information about their economic activities and their corporate social responsibility, including their environmental responsibility. Consequently, the extent to which an organisation's actions are visible on its website can be taken as an indicator of its commitment to environmental issues. The present article proposes a model for evaluating the environmental commitment of agri-food companies through the visibility of objective information on their environmental actions on their websites. The information is presented in tabular form, consisting of 33 items, and the combination of these with a predetermined weight gives an index called the Environmental Commitment Web Index (ECWI). The model was applied to all large and medium-sized Spanish wineries in 2018 and 2024. The findings indicate an improvement in the environmental commitment of these wineries, as reflected by the doubling of the ECWI during this period from 9.8 points in 2018 to 20.2 points in 2024. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of these wineries were regarded as exhibiting a 'very poor' environmental commitment: 94.2% in 2018 and 81.4% in 2024. It is concluded that all large and medium-sized Spanish wineries should undertake sustained endeavours to disseminate environmental initiatives on their websites.

Contract farming is regarded as an effective strategy for smallholder farmers in developing countries to enhance their agricultural competitiveness. However, limited research exists on its potential to promote green, sustainable development. This paper investigates the impact of contract farming participation on farmers' green technology efficiency using data from a sample of 627 vegetable growers in Shandong, China and employs the propensity score matching method. Our findings are as follows: i) Under the counterfactual assumption, participation in contract farming increases green technology efficiency from 0.560 to 0.614. The efficiency of contract production bases, ranked from highest to lowest, is as follows: self-owned base, stock-sharing base, and contractual base. ii) The provision of productive services serves as a significant mediating factor in enhancing green technology efficiency, with a more substantial impact than issuing planned instructions. iii) Increasing purchase prices, as an effective means of providing motivational incentives, significantly amplifies the effect of contract farming on green technology efficiency in self-owned and stock-sharing bases. As organisational models evolve toward greater integration, the enhancing effect of price incentives on green technology efficiency strengthens. This study concludes with several public policy and agricultural management recommendations.

Agricultural carbon emissions (ACE) is a critical contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, which have already become a common challenge for global carbon reduction. As a major agricultural producer and largest carbon emitter, China has made great efforts to reduce ACE. Using the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2022, this study explores the heterogeneous impacts of formal environmental regulations (FER) and informal environmental regulations (IER) on ACE. The results reveal that both FER and IER have significant effect on reducing ACE, with FER showing a more pronounced effect. The mechanism analysis indicates that agricultural technological innovation and planting structure adjustment play important mediating roles in this impact mechanism. The effect of FER is more remarkable in major grain producing areas than in non-major grain producing areas, while the effect of IER is completely opposite. Compared with coastal regions, both FER and IER have significant inhibitory effect on ACE in inland regions. Additionally, the marketisation level may reinforce the inhibitory effect of both FER and IER on ACE. Based on the empirical results, this study suggests to strengthen the synergistic effect of FER and IER, promote agricultural technology innovation, and formulate targeted policies according to regional differences.

This study investigates whether participation in agricultural global value chains (GVCs) leads to slower growth in manufacturing for the period of 1995–2022 in 44 countries. Our baseline estimations indicate that forward GVC integration in agriculture, crop cultivation and animal production supports manufacturing growth. We further explore whether the income level of countries influences the impact of agricultural GVCs on manufacturing growth. Forward participation in agriculture, crop cultivation, and animal production in developing countries increases growth. However, in developed countries, deeper forward integration in animal production and backward integration in crop cultivation have a substantial negative impact on manufacturing growth. Furthermore, we test if resource reliance in manufacturing matters. Our findings reveal that forward participation in agriculture, crop cultivation, and animal production stimulates growth in resource-based manufacturing. For non-resource-based manufacturing, higher integration into backward participation in animal production drives growth. Overall, our results indicate that exporting agricultural intermediaries might not necessarily be a resource curse, instead, they can serve as a catalyst for industrialisation in developing countries.

Taking China as an example in this study, we aim to reveal the enabling effects of agricultural science and technology advancement on the progress of rural industrial incorporation at a relatively more refined level. The main innovation in this study lies in the decomposition of agricultural science and technology advancement, followed by an analysis of its effect on rural industrial incorporation along both linear and non-linear dimensions. The study results show that, along the linear dimension, agricultural science and technology advancement, agricultural knowledge advancement and agricultural technology advancement play significant driving roles in the progress of rural industrial incorporation. However, although the estimated coefficient of the integration of agricultural knowledge advancement and technology advancement is positive, it is not statistically significant. Along the non-linear dimension, agricultural science and technology advancement, agricultural knowledge advancement and agricultural technology advancement all exhibit significantly positive effects across different intervals. However, although the integration of agricultural knowledge advancement and technology advancement also shows a positive effect, its significance appears only in the second interval, indicating that the effect of this variable in promoting rural industrial incorporation can be realised only under certain conditions

In recent years, China has promoted large-scale hog farming through various approaches. However, this scale-up process may be affected by economic policy uncertainty. This paper empirically examines the impact of policy uncertainty on hog farming scale-up using provincial panel data from 2016–2022 and a fixed-effects model. Our results indicate that economic policy uncertainty significantly inhibits hog farming scale-up, and this effect remains significant even when we increase the criteria for recognising scale-up, alternative estimation methods include two-stage least squares (2SLS), dynamic panel model and panel Poisson model. Mechanism analysis reveals that economic policy uncertainty not only exacerbates the impact of labour and capital factor prices on scale-up hog farming but also exacerbates the volatility of hog prices, which further raises the risks faced by hog farming and inhibits scale-up hog farming. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect of economic policy uncertainty on hog farming scale-up decreases as farm size increases. Higher-level economic policy uncertainty can inhibit scale-up hog farming, while lower-level economic policy uncertainty can instead promote scale-up hog farming. Economic policy uncertainty has a more obvious inhibitory effect on scale-up hog farming in major development areas. These findings have important implications for the promotion of large-scale hog farming and related policy regulation.

Current dietary patterns in developed countries, characterised by high intakes of processed and animal-source foods, are linked to increased obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, as well as environmental burdens. This paper investigates determinants of red meat, white meat, and fish consumption across five European countries, using representative survey data from over 10 000 individuals. Our findings reveal that men consume more red meat and fish than women, though, when adjusted for body weight, women consume significantly more white meat and fish. While vegetarians are mostly people younger than 35 years, meat eaters in the same age category tend to eat more red meat than older people. Cross-country differences highlight the need for localised policy approaches. Individual values also shape dietary choices. Security-oriented people prefer red meat, while altruistic individuals consume less of it. Biospheric values, while strongly associated with being vegetarian, show no significant association with meat or fish intake. To reduce red meat consumption, policies should highlight health benefits of eating less meat, with messages tailored to specific demographic groups. Additionally, enhancing meat alternatives' affordability, taste, and appearance is essential for promoting dietary shifts.

Countries are calling for a sustainable transition of agri-food systems due to the volatility of food security in the context of climate change, and the agricultural bioeconomy may be a more dependable solution. By capturing, coding, and displaying word clouds of Chinese agricultural bioeconomy policy texts, this study deconstructs the development framework of China's agricultural bioeconomy policies based on the agricultural biosystem dimension, the policy instrument dimension, and the comprehensive dimension. It concludes that there is a clear trend of sustainable transformation and cross-sectoral linkage in China's agricultural bioeconomy policies. Overall, China's agricultural bioeconomy policies have the following comprehensive features: first, the policy is deeply integrated, considering both economic development and environmental friendliness; second, the policy is safety-oriented, taking into account competitiveness and strategy; and third, the policy is innovation-driven, taking into account fundamentality and foresight. Efforts should be made in the future to enhance the competitiveness of the agricultural bioeconomy within the framework of an all-encompassing approach to food and to help China's agricultural bioeconomy on the road to sustainable transition by improving fiscal and tax support, advocating the use of financial instruments, creating an alliance for the agricultural bioeconomy, and promoting international trade exchanges and cooperation.

This paper analyses the distribution of CAP subsidies between primary beneficiaries (farms) and final beneficiaries (farm owners) in Slovakia in 2021, using unique micro-level data. The results show a significant inequality in the distribution of CAP subsidies between primary and final beneficiaries in Slovakia. The majority of CAP payments (92% for primary beneficiaries and 89% for final beneficiaries) are concentrated among the top 20% of beneficiaries, with a higher concentration among primary beneficiaries than final beneficiaries. However, there is a reversal at the top stratum of beneficiaries. The top 1% of primary beneficiaries receive 26.2% of CAP subsidies, compared to 31.0% for final beneficiaries. For the remaining 99% of beneficiaries, the distribution of CAP subsidies is more concentrated at the level of primary beneficiaries than at the level of final beneficiaries. The analyses suggest that the implementation of the CAP in Slovakia has not been sufficient to address the unequal distribution of CAP subsidies.

Agricultural logistics face unique challenges such as seasonal demand fluctuations, perishability, and geographic dispersion. The paper systematically analyses 63 peer-reviewed articles from 2013 to 2025, focusing on key optimisation techniques, including multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), vehicle routing problems (VRP), and path planning problems (PPP). The findings highlight how logistics optimisation can reduce operational costs, improve resource utilisation, and enhance supply chain resilience. Additionally, the study identifies gaps in inbound logistics research and emphasises the need for further integration of digital technologies. Future research should focus on comprehensive, technology-driven solutions to improve adaptability and transparency in agricultural supply chains. Key findings reveal that optimised logistics models can lead to cost reductions of up to 58%, emissions savings of over 60%, and significant improvements in delivery time, field efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

We identify the factors affecting the participation in land accumulation of rural households by using a multinomial logit model and assess the income effects of participation in land accumulation by using the propensity score matching (PSM) method. We use household data from a rural survey in three provinces in the Red River Delta of Vietnam in 2019. Our results show that farmland accumulation is significantly correlated with age and gender of household head, as well as agricultural productive assets, non-farm income, saving and access to credit. The participation in farmland accumulation leads to an increase in total household income, although the effect is different between land increasing and land decreasing groups. We suggest enhancing access to credit and supporting non-farm activities to accelerate the accumulation of agricultural land and consequently improve household income.

In this study, we attempt to infer the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the intra–European Union (EU) agrifood trade from out-of-sample forecasts. We compare the actual level of trade during the COVID-19 period with counterfactual values derived from univariate forecasting models [regARIMA (Linear regression with autoregressive integrated moving average errors) and Holt-Winters methods]. We analyse agrifood imports and exports of specific EU countries and the EU-27 aggregate on the basis of monthly data for the period from January 2010 to February 2022. The findings reveal a significant decrease in trade activity in the first year of the pandemic that was negatively correlated to COVID-19 restrictions applied by EU countries. Surprisingly, COVID-19 restrictions do not significantly explain the diversified agrifood trade response among EU countries during the pandemic.

Agricultural mechanisation is rapidly increasing in China and will have an increasing impact on agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) in the future. This study uses panel data from 27 provinces in China, spanning the years 2001‒2020, to measure agricultural TFP, and estimates the effects of mechanisation on TFP, technical efficiency, and technological progress. The results reveal that the level of agricultural mechanisation can promote TFP. TFP has a cumulative effect in the previous period, which can also significantly affect TFP in the current period. The level of agricultural mechanisation improves technical efficiency and promotes technological progress, but this is not statistically significant. Regional heterogeneity exists in mechanisation’s effect on agricultural TFP, with the largest effect occurring in the group with the lowest TFP. Therefore, efforts to promote the use of agricultural machinery should increase. China’s agricultural machinery subsidy policy must be further adjusted, and agricultural machinery research investments increased, while the government must address the heterogeneity between regions and focus on developing agricultural mechanisation in the central and western regions.

How to encourage backers to increase investment and obtain more funds is an important issue for both initiators and platforms in reward-based crowdfunding. Based on the trust theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study explores the impact of project information disclosure on the investment intensity of backers in agri-food crowdfunding. The results show that the initiator type, trademark registration, number of certificates, number of reward types, number of project updates, and number of comments had significant positive effects on backers’ investment intensity. Meanwhile, the investment threshold and lottery had a significantly negative impact on backers’ investment intensity. The number of backers played a mediating role in the relationship between independent variables and backers’ investment intensity. Based on the research conclusions, practical implications were proposed for initiators, crowdfunding platforms, and regulators.

Most empirical studies evaluating efficiency in the agricultural sector estimate cost efficiency, assuming homogeneity across firms. However, achieving the goal of profit maximisation requires both minimising costs and maximising revenue. Unlike cost efficiency, the concept of profit efficiency considers the errors on both the input side and the output side, and thus, it is more appropriate for evaluating the overall performance of firms. This paper estimates profit efficiency and its determinants in the agricultural sector in Spain using a Bayesian stochastic frontier model with random coefficients. This methodology adequately captures the heterogeneity across firms in the industry. The results reveal, firstly, that agricultural firms in Spain are operating with an average profit inefficiency of 35.78% and, secondly, that this inefficiency is affected, albeit unevenly, by the size and age of the farm. Finally, the implications of these results for managers and public policies are discussed.