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In the European Union, the support of Less Favoured Areas (LFA) has a long tradition as a part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Above all, it is the objective of the subsidies to maintain the agricultural production in LFAs, but also to consider the environmental aspects in LFAs and its funding schemes. Investigations of the latter are subject of this article. After having discussed the theoretical possibilities to influence environmental impacts by the funding scheme, several analyses are compiled and complemented by own calculations. The research has shown that agricultural practices within Less Favoured Areas are more environmentally friendly than in other areas. Environmentally friendly in this regard means e.g. a lower use of fertilisers and pesticides, but also a higher participation rate in agri-environmental measures. In addition, the crop structures of farms are analysed, e.g. the share of maize and wheat in farms inside and outside the LFAs. While the results presented in this paper relate mainly to Germany, the information on the European level is also taken into consideration. Finally, based on these investigations, recommendations for the revision of the funding programmes following 2013 are given.

Agriculture in developing countries is experiencing profound, fast-moving changes. Globalization, although advancing more rapidly in some countries than others, has hastened the transition from the traditional, low-productivity agriculture toward a modern, high-productivity agricultural sector. The resulting processes of structural change are having profound consequences for employment, the methods of generating income, risk management, poverty alleviation, and the wellbeing in rural households in these countries. This study describes the approaches for the organised value chains as a new business model in a globalized world and it describes about the great variety of financial arrangements found in India and the actors in the agri-food chain with varying degrees of formality and informality. The study also brings about the role of the value chain in promoting the rural financing deepening, the financial operators that use agricultural value chain to provide dynamic, innovative services with low cost transaction costs and the technical assistance programs to help the participants in the chain to upgrade their operations, to reduce risk and to improve the access to financial services and concludes by identifying the changes in paradigm.

The main aim of the article is recognition of the issues of complexity in economics with the particular emphasis on agriculture, as well as indication of resulting implications for this sector. Complexity in economic theory is in general perceived from the perspective of external effects, while the problem may also have other connotations: as the so-called fallacy of composition, or the phenomenon of entropy. The problem of complexity indicates the need for further reflection on the holistic perception of economic processes. This is particularly evident in the case of agriculture, when the evaluation based mainly on microeconomic approach from the perspective of the effect/cost relationship loses sight of the environmental, social, and cultural context. Focus should also be put on the entropy approach, which takes into account the openness of socio-economic systems and the limitations of resources, including the environment. Both the operating practice of agriculture together with the institutional surrounding, and agricultural economics are more advanced in the area of solving the problems of complexity on the practical and theoretical grounds, but there are still many issues that require solutions, particularly quantification of externalities. The work is theoretical in nature and a heuristic approach was applied in the considerations.

The article is focused on food problem in the least developed countries, on the chosen areas where the overall situation is the most problematic. It deals with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, belonging to the low income food deficit countries with one of the world's lowest rates of the gross domestic product per capita. The paper defines the food security situation in a global connection, representing a wide complex of economic, social, demographic, technologic and political aspects of production, distribution, shift and consumption of foodstuffs. Despite some progresses in the political situation, the effects of the economic crisis and the widespread food insecurity are expected to persist. Te humanitarian assistance is now needed to support the needs of the most vulnerable. In the longer term, the countries have the significant goal of consolidating peace and security and strengthening the overall governance, while at the same time reconstructing and rehabilitating their economy.

After the official start of the Montenegrin accession negotiations with the EU in June 2012, it is important to plan a significant increase in the agricultural budget financing well ahead of the accession. Considering the structure and economic importance of agriculture for the generation of Montenegrin GDP, the balanced trade deficit, the reduction of poverty and the regional disparities in development and reversing the negative demographic trends, the proposed reformed agricultural budget of Montenegro in the period 2014-2018 outlines significantly higher levels of the funding both as a share of the state budget and the GDP. The proposed proportions of financing of the key measure groups in the subsequent tables utilize as a starting point the model defined in the Montenegrin National Program of Food Production and Rural Development 2009-2013. Some changes in the proportion of the measures are also proposed according to the agricultural sector needs and the institutional capacity building for the next phase of the EU accession negotiations. In order to prepare the Montenegrin agriculture to cope with the competitive pressures of the EU single market, the indisputable conclusion of this study is that the proposed future levels of agricultural funding in the agricultural budget should be at least near to those (in the relative terms) of the comparable economies of the Western Balkans countries.

The present study covers empirical research on the selected Agri-Biotech firms of Punjab. The sample has been chosen from the state of Punjab covering the sectors Food Processing Industry, Fertilizer and Pesticides Industry. On the basis of factor analysis, the study has also identified key factors influencing competitiveness. These are Threat of new competition; Threat of substitute products or services; Bargaining power of suppliers; Intensity of competitive rivalry; Bargaining power of customers; Rivalry among existing firms. The study also tries to evaluate the findings on the basis of the author-factor matrix. The aim is to identify the key factors influencing competiveness. It analyses the difference in competitive factors on the basis of the nature of the industry and on the basis of scale of the firms. Then finally it tries to determine the key competitive factors influencing the market share. The results indicate that the Threat of new competition and Threat of substitutes/services emerge as the important predictors. Intensity of competitive rivalry; Preparedness for Competition; and Bargaining power of suppliers also emerge as significant predictors. These variables explain 79.6% of variation in the model.

Despite some progresses in the political situation, the effects of the economic crisis and widespread food insecurity are expected to persist. Humanitarian assistance is now needed to support the needs of the most vulnerable. In the longer term, countries have the significant goal of consolidating peace and security and strengthening the overall governance, while at the same time, reconstructing and rehabilitating their economy.

The paper aims at the overview of the main approaches of state support implemented by developed and developing countries and the assessment of their distorting influences on the trade with agricultural commodities. The current state of state support is analyzed on the examples of EU-27, the USA and Japan. The experiences of developing countries are summarized on the examples of China, Russia and the CIS countries. State support tools are grouped according to the WTO classification. The alternative classification is implemented in order to compare the distorting effects caused by the state support. The EPACIS model is implemented to analyze the effects of trade liberalization for the distribution of agricultural commodities and trade policies in developing countries. The model is adjusted in order to assess the effects of state support for the production and trade with agricultural commodities in developing countries, recently accessed the WTO (the case of Russia). Imitation calculations allow formulating policies for the developing agricultural markets depending on the degrees of their sensitivity to foreign trade regulations and domestic support.

The comprehensive risk analysis of a business such as farming entails questions on what is at stake, how important is the risk concern and how to deal with it. We performed a sequential mixed method, with the in-depth interviews in the first stage (n = 35), followed by a survey on the Flemish FADN (n = 614) in the second, to investigate the farmers' risk perception, the attitudes towards risk and the perceived usefulness of the risk management strategies. We find that, rather than the short-term volatility in prices, the longer term co-evolution of expenses versus receipts is of a major concern to farmers, next to the land availability and the policy risks. Farmers are shown to be only slightly risk averse, rather risk neutral even. Further, our results suggest that farmers do not consider extensively studied risk management strategies such as contracts, futures and insurances, a valid option for their farm, and put more faith in internal strategies such as the debt management, the liquidity management and diversification. Last, risk management is to a substantial degree performed at the household level, rather than at the farm level, with strategies such as cutting the private expenses and the off-farm employment. These results hardly differ according to the farm and farmer characteristics.

The inter-related causes of food insecurity in these countries are mainly the long lasting civil wars, a limited access to land, environmental degradation, climatic shocks and the rapid population growth resulting from the high birth rates and the return of refugees.

The cooperative movement in Poland has a long but difficult history, which has caused farmers to have an aversion to cooperatives. Nonetheless, in the early 1990s, the first farmers' cooperative marketing organizations, which were called agricultural producer groups, appeared in the market. These groups are bottom-up, voluntary organizations the primary purpose of which is to jointly sell their members' output. In this paper, it is investigated why the new forms of governance, namely cooperative arrangements, were chosen, and we evaluate the implications of these choices on the market success of these groups. Empirical data were collected from 62 producer groups in one Polish province. We found that the groups were typically functioning as associations, unions, and limited liability companies. The factors that had an impact on the choices made were the number of members and the specific investment per member. Additionally, if the initial investment level was low, not only set-up and operational costs but also tax considerations played a role in the decision. Therefore, we argue that the new bottom-up cooperatives, which are theoretically suitable when the start-up capital is high or the number of members is large, will gradually be recognized and accepted in the market despite the fact that these cooperatives have a "bad reputation" caused by the socialist legacy. The new cooperative development trend confirms this argument.

The goal of the paper is to analyse the potential for the innovation of cross border clusters from the sector of agriculture. The methodology which is used is the research of intellectual property (IP) of the clusters' members and clusters by using a specific questionnaire for clusters in two countries: Hungary and Serbia. The analysis of results shows a high level of innovativeness within the clusters' members and the need of protection of their intellectual achievements. The similar results were achieved in both countries. They show that the IP rights at the level of clusters should be protected as the cross border trademark and the name of origin. The scientific contribution of this paper is to introduce the concept of the joint cross border IP protection for two or more clusters from different countries which might be applied across the EU.

The contribution follows the development of Czech wine exports to Slovakia, depending on the development of the wine industry attractiveness in Slovakia. Wine export from the Czech Republic to Slovakia in the terms of volume and value of exports, both globally and in the division of export bulk and bottled wine, is confronted with the development of factors influencing the wine sector attractiveness in Slovakia. The Slovak wine market is a market in the phase of growth, the wine consumption per capita in 2011 reached 14.7 Lt.; the domestic production covered only 46% of the domestic consumption. The level of the industry concentration is high, the 6 largest companies produce more than 18.5 mill. Lt. of wine - 50% of the total domestic production. Wine legislation is comparable to the Czech legislation, the purchasing power of the customers shows a positive development, but the cheap table wine imports still represent more than 50% of the total domestic consumption. The opportunity for Czech exporters is the factor represented by the size and growth of the market and the legislation, too. The situation is rather more positive for the re-export of cheap wine from other countries than the direct export of Czech wine to Slovakia in case of other analyzed factors.

Agriculture represents a significant part of the national economy. It secures production of food and influences many related processing industries. Although the volume of agricultural production and its proportion in the gross domestic product has been decreasing, there is a huge interest in increasing the performance of agriculture companies. One of the ways to enhance the company performance, to gain new markets or to achieve cost savings is a merger. Mergers are not very usual in the field of agriculture currently - their proportion in the total number of mergers in the Czech Republic in 2001-2013 was 3.07%. The aim of this paper is to analyse mergers in the field of agriculture. The analysis focuses on the consequences of mergers from the perspective of changes in the financial position and the company performance in the year before the merger and three years after the merger. The analysis proved that the company size (measured by the balance sheet total) decreased as a consequence of mergers and their performance increased.

The food market is created by the farmers, whose importance arises from their production of the raw materials from which food is made. These products are processed and supplied to the retail chains, where they are offered to the end consumers. The food market is further regulated, and in a certain sense limited, by the EU organs, as well as by the domestic agricultural policies, by the means of a whole host of directives, norms and regulations. The aim of this article is to define the individual organs on the food market in the CR, to evaluate their work in the food chain from the production of the primary raw materials to their distribution to the end consumer. The article will also present the selected regulatory factors of the market in the context of the EU agricultural policy.

Soildegradationis aserious and widespread problemin Albania. Itmanifests itselfin manyformsandcauses arange ofeffects. The aim of this study was to analyze the economic losses from soil erosion and compaction in relationship to agriculture in Albania. On-site effects of these two degradative processes affect farmers directly through reducingproductionand increasingthe costsof farming. Calculation ofeconomic losses was performed by using the replacement and lost production methods. According to our assessments, the wheat and maize yield losses due to the soil compaction are112 164 tons or US$ 40.2 million, and the plant nutrient losses due to the water erosion are 69 609 tons or US$ 98million. Economic losses from the erosion and compaction in the agricultural area in Albania are at least US$ 138.2 million per year or about 5.5% of the agricultural GDP. Based on the assessed economic losses from soil degradation, it can be concluded that the soil conservation in Albania is economically viable.

In the study, some important herbal agricultural products with respect to their production have been clustered, in addition to determining the most important or the best countries in terms of the production of certain herbal agricultural products by using the factor analysis. The FAO data set has been used in obtaining production of 30 agricultural products in 86 countries. 8 factors have been achieved by considering the Eigen values the numbers of which are greater than one. Each factor contains certain herbal agricultural products. First factor explains 40.51% of the total variation whilst the last factor explains only 3.89% of the total variability. 10 best countries for each factor have been revealed.

Sustainable food consumption is a core policy objective of the new millennium in the national and international agenda, as a consequence, the attention towards sustainable consumption has significantly increased in the last decade. However, the consumer attitudes and buying behaviours of sustainable food are still not completely understood. In this context, this paper aims to investigate the factors affecting consumers' attitudes towards food products with sustainable attributes. The first part of the work presents an overview of the theoretical concepts of sustainable consumption. Subsequently, the results of an empirical analysis with a sample of 300 consumers aimed at assessing factors' affecting consumer attitudes towards food products with sustainable attributes, such as Organic, Fair Trade and typical products, are presented. The results presented in this paper are valuable for both producers in the formulation of marketing strategies and for public institutions in the planning of the programs of education and information for the promotion of sustainable consumption.

This paper assesses the effects of the performance of the OECD national economies and agricultural sectors on the farm producer support for the years 1986 to 2009. The study is complementary to the large amount of microeconomic research that highlights the importance of support to agricultural industry. Data for the analysis are taken from the OECD Producer and Consumer Support Estimates database and the World Bank World Development Indicators 2010 database. The Producer Support Estimate - PSE (expressed in absolute value, in percent of the total farm revenues and per 1 hectare of agricultural land) was taken as the dependent variable, whereas the selected indicators describing the performance of the economies (e.g. GDP per capita, unemployment, fiscal balance, government debt, government expense and tax revenue, exchange rate, agriculture share in GDP and employment, agricultural raw materials exports and imports) were the independent variables. Utilizing these variables, a simple linear regression analysis was conducted and resulted in many significant associations. In the period analyzed, there was a wide gap between the most and least farm supporting countries in terms of the annual average percentage PSE and the PSE per hectare. Substantial differences between the countries in the variability of the PSE over the time occurred. The empirical results obtained from the regression models reveal, among other, that when the countries were becoming richer, the percentage PSE was generally decreasing. Mixed results were obtained for the relationship between the percentage PSE and unemployment, as in some countries it was negative, while in the others positive. Expansionary fiscal policy exerted opposite effects on the PSE in different countries. Labour productivity in agriculture was inversely correlated with the percentage PSE.

This study aims at testing a theoretical model explaining why people follow healthy eating habits and in particular to identify how the nutritional labels use influences this behavioural pattern. The results indicate that the individuals who utilise more often the nutritional labels follow healthier eating habits, such as avoiding snacking between meals, a lower intake of salt and avoiding the fat intake. According the factors explaining the label use, the health knowledge, the bad health status and being aware of the diet-health relation are found significant. Age and household size are the socio-demographic variables which also affect the nutritional label use and eating habits. Findings provide more evidence on the consumers' underlying motivations to pay attention to nutritional labelling, which allows evaluating the impact of the implementation of the Regulation EC 1924/2006 of the European Parliament and the Council of 20 December 2006 on nutritional and health claims made on foods (Regulation EC 1924/2006). In addition, empirical results could help the local policy makers to establish appropriate market strategies to increase healthy eating habits by promoting the nutritional label use by consumers.

Slovenia, like other developed countries, is characterized by the fact that the number of farm takeovers is decreasing and farms are not being transferred to successors in a timely manner. As an EU member state, Slovenia is entitled to financial incentives intended to halt or at least ameliorate this trend, but the situation is nonetheless not improving. This article proceeds from the hypothesis that economic factors are not the only ones that affect succession on Slovenian farms. The hypothesis was confirmed in a study limited to mountain farms. It was determined that, although economic factors have a significant effect on succession on Slovenian farms, at the same time other factors also affect this. Among these, the factors that stand out the most are those through which tradition or traditional thought and behavioral patterns are expressed, as well as the factors that express the standpoints, perceptions, and opinions of farm owners.

The study uses the fuzzy Delphi and FANP (fuzzy analysis network process) methods to integrate the views of experts from enterprises and academia regarding the future direction of the agricultural biotechnology industry in Taiwan, in order to extract the critical success factors influencing its transformation. This study compares the differences in the "cross-domain" and "non-cross-domain" critical success factors, and expects that the research results could be a decision-making reference for both the industry and the government. The research results show that the cross-domain critical factor that influence the transformation of the agricultural biotechnology industry in Taiwan are sequentially: a stable source of raw materials, control of the trend of market demand, a new production equipment, the capability in supporting upstream and downstream industries, the integration of the human resources of the upstream, midstream, and downstream industries, and the capability in marketing and promotion. The non-cross-domain critical factors are sequentially: the capacity to establish the system of product technology, the capacity to control intellectual property rights, a perfect educational system, the capacity to carry out risk management of the new product development, the competence in cultivating the capacity of technical and R&D personnel, and laws and regulations.

There exists no energy policy in the European Union, but rather a whole series of long-term goals setting its strategic orientation. Until 2000, when the Green Book named "Towards the European Strategy of Energy Supplies Securing" was accepted, no real debate on the strategy of energy was held in the EU. The Green Book represents a key document of the European energy policy and it originated as a consequence of the fears of the European Committee regarding the growing energy dependence on the energy resources imports, from the politically not stable parts of the world. Among the three key points of the energy strategy, there belong stable supply of energy, acceptable energy prices and environment protection. With regard to the deepening European integration and interconnection of the individual member states economies, the decisions of one country also have an energy impact on the other states. Therefore, the cooperation among the individual members is necessary.

Socio-economic backwardness is usually defined by common characteristics or classification. The differences between the DMEs and DCs in the case of resources (prevalence of DCs) and in the case of outputs and performance (prevalence of DMEs) is evident. The difference in the economic level and the level of living between the DCs and DMEs had deepened during the last three decades, however, it has to be pointed out again, that this difference is increasing still more slowly what can be a presage of an approaching turn (in the sense of the possible beginning of a slow decrease of this gap). While the per capita GDP indicator is regarded as one of the most important indicators of the economic level, the HDI can be regarded as the most important indicator of the given country population level of living and as such, it is hitherto rather underestimated. Similarly, the CPM indicator (as the measure of poverty), which is a composed indicator, has a higher testifying ability than a simple income level per capita in USD defined as the poverty level. It is obvious, that economic development is impossible without social development, and vice versa. Generally, the gap between the more developed developing countries, measured through the world income distribution, is then still widening. As a positive phenomenon, there can be, however, regarded the fact that deepening of this gap occurs at a lower rate. Through a more detailed analysis by the individual indicators, the most valuable from which are the indicators composed from several partial indicators (for example HDI, CPM), a certain tendencies towards the gradual improvement of the socio-economic situation in developing countries as a whole - but with the relevant differences in the individual regions of the world - can be discerned. In general, close ties have been proven between the economic growth and the growth of the population level of living, their mutual influencing and the main elements from which they are composed.

There is a sufficient global potential to produce the food required to feed the world population on the global level. Despite this, the number of hungry people worldwide was 925 million in 2010. Developing countries account for 98% of the world undernourished people and have a prevalence of undernourishment of 16%. Food security increasingly depends on non-agricultural factors like energy, trade and finance. The negative economic and social impacts of food, energy and the global economic and financial crises showed the vulnerability to poverty. High and rising food prices further undermined the food security and threatened the livelihoods of the most vulnerable by decreasing their already limited purchasing power. The main step in reducing poverty and hunger in developing countries is to invest in agriculture and rural development. Scaled-up investments in social protection that focus on nutrition and health are also crucial for improving the lives of the poorest people.

The land consolidation is a significant instrument for the ownership relations issue and for ensuring the maintenance of land functions and the increase of the ecological stability. Despite of the demonstrable arguments, this activity is not fully valued by the society, which is retroactively reflected from the long term point of view into the processes and structures of land consolidation in countryside. The analysis of the current organisation and management of the Land Offices pointed at substantial regional differences in the process management effectiveness, the utilisation of expert capacities during the land consolidation realisation and further administration actions. There is proposed an optimisation of the institutional structure that will be sufficiently flexible towards the changes of the demanded actions. The need for change of organisation and activities requires also the agro-environmental policies of the European Union.

The primary purpose of this article is to discuss the trade practices used by retail chains from the point of view of the possible solutions of conflicts between the members of the distribution channel, which have an influence on selling prices for the end users. It is based on the knowledge of the theory of the transaction cost analysis, which makes it possible for the members of the distribution channel to make decisions on the number of forms of the organization in order to realize their activities successfully. In this framework and using the example of milk, the article shows the trade practices of retail chains to improve the relationships manufacturer - retailer in the Slovak consumer market.

The notion of international relationships is supplemented by other phenomena during the last time. One of them is globalisation, called on by technological, social and cultural changes, which have shortened the economic distance among countries. The improvement of transport and communication technologies has decreased transport costs of goods, people and information. Traditional governmental policies limiting the cross-border transactions were liberalised or removed what in consequence brought about the growth of international trade and foreign direct investments (FDI). Globalisation changes the properties of the world economy and influences the core of the successful economic approaches to development, what increases the need to secure the sustainability of economic development.

The risk rate of sugar beet growing was analyzed by using the algorithm for modelling and generating the random numbers based on the conditions determined in advance and the statistical distribution of sugar beets yield, the total costs, earnings and gross profit. On the bases of results of the analysis of economic risks of sugar beet production in years 1995-2009, it follows that the sugar beet growing in all regions is highly risky in the Czech Republic. The subsidy SAPS and TOP-UP per 1 hectare of sugar beet have a positive impact on its economics though not sufficient enough. In practice, it means that it is highly probable that the break-even point will not be achieved and thereby it is highly probable that the fixed costs are not covered and the update of machines is significantly limited. This happens mainly in the marginal regions. If the agricultural companies count on the separate sugar payment, the sugar beet growing is in all regions of the Czech Republic with acceptable risk.

Globalisation is at the beginning of the new century a double-edged weapon: a strong driving force of economic growth, the development of new technologies and the growth of the level of living in the poor as well as rich countries, but also a controversory process which damages national sovereignty, undermines the local culture and traditions and presents a threat of the economic and social non-stability. The key question of the 21^st century then is, whether the states will be able to keep the process under control or whether they will become its victims.