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The paper deals with identification of some forms of potential competitive advantage that can be applied by the Slovak agrarian enterprises after the accession to the EU. The capacity of the economies of scale is being analyzed, as well as the potential of the labor productivity growth, and input management in controlling of intensification process. The paper is targeted at verifying the extent of application of competitive advantages by agrarian enterprises, and identifying the reasons of obstacles that hinder their full utilization.

This paper follows previous papers published by the authors. All the papers are concerned with standard direct payments, the system of administration of direct payments approved for 2004 and their impact on the economy of agricultural enterprises farming in different production areas. The impact of different ways of using additional payments for the years 2005 and 2006 are compared in this report. Attention is mostly paid to ways of the maximum adaptation to the Reform of Common Agricultural Policy.

Decision-making process of households on food consumption is discussed in the post-Keynesian theory of household choice. Since the core assumption of uncertainty is employed, the set of consumption alternatives is restricted to the subset of the known ones. When searching for these alternatives, the consumer faces the search costs expressed by time of search. The sample of Czech households was investigated to ascertain the volume of the search and 57% of households do not seek for any information that are relevant for decision-making on foodstuff purchase. To overcome this activity, the households more likely rely on prices and the range of goods of the closest sellers to them. Searching for information on product is replaced by reliance on habits and recommendations of the others. On the contrary, the uncertainty of real purchase power is of lower significance in food consumption, because the foodstuffs meet the basic physiological needs and dispose of constrained stability in storage. Thus, households cannot always postpone (or bring forward) their consumption. In order to deal with the lack of money, households from lower income levels reduce their expenditures for foodstuffs more often than those from the higher income levels. Consequently, the relationship between the level of income and needs satiation is outlined.

This paper deals with the classic and contemporary sociological research of countryside in the Czech Republic, carried out with a monographic procedure. It mentions basic social factors and theoretical and methodological assumptions of the monographic study of the Czech and Moravian countryside until the 30's of the 20^th century. It briefly introduces one of the classical studies Dolní Roveň. Then comes a part that provides information on post-war monographic research. Last part of the paper aims at present sociological study of countryside using the monographic procedure. It characterizes its new approach, different from the classic studies due to accepting interpretativistic paradigm and regarding empirical methods. This last chapter is based on empirical experience of the author of this paper.

The paper describes the importance of integrated purchasing for agrarian businesses and for retail chains, i.e. on two opposite sides of the different economic and negotiating power. It points out the trends of the modern purchasing, economic benefits of long-term business relations, and the importance of objectively settled terms of payment for the purchased products. The paper emphasizes the specifics of sales cooperatives of farmers as a modern element of sales and purchasing activities of the agricultural primary production.

Czech settlement structure as well as the structure of public administration on municipal level is extremely disintegrated. Besides a great number of very small villages - small settlement units - there exists a big share of very small municipalities with self-government. Those municipalities can and often do cooperate in voluntary associations, which can transfer some of their competencies by a specific municipal treaty. This paper is focused on the discussion of possibilities and limits of cooperation among rural municipalities. Different forms of existing collaboration are discussed and possibilities of new forms of municipal collaboration are drafted, including the possible presumed and real dangers of such collaboration.

The convergence of price levels is one of the important aspects of a real convergence and is often viewed as a criterion for the evaluation of preparedness. The convergence process of comparative price levels can run either through the exchange rate channel and/or that of nominal prices. The paper is focused on the assessment of comparative price levels and the rate of their convergence in the enlarged European Union within the period of 1999-2003. With the exception of Cyprus, the price levels in the new EU member countries were significantly lower. The greatest differences from the price level of EU countries existed in Poland, Slovakia and Baltic countries. The new member countries differ also in the rate of convergence. When combining their initial position and the rate of convergence, it can be concluded that all countries will be able to reach 80% of the comparative price level of the European Union till the year 2010. In Poland, the development is very unfavourable because its price level will reach only 55% provided that there will be no changes in its development.

The paper discusses the importance of commodity exchange trading while placing a special emphasis on the increasingly close interconnection between commodity markets and financial instruments markets. The aim of the paper is to prove that at present, commodity markets cannot be seen as strictly separate from markets trading in financial instruments, as there are increasingly close links between the two, which effectively lead to the transfer of financial resources invested in the financial market into the real economy. The paper analyses the most significant ties that already exist between the commodities and financial investment instruments in the financial and capital market, as well as the links that are very likely to come into existence in the near future. In the concluding part, there is a summary of the reasons that will necessarily lead to a further world-wide development of commodity exchange trading and a prediction of the lines along which this development is likely to take place.

The Delta Group with its daughter company Delta Pekárny, a.s., belongs to the most significant firms in the Czech food processing industry and it is number one baking company in the Czech market of fresh, long-shelf-life and frozen bakery products. The Delta Group associates eleven industrial bakeries in the Czech Republic and four in Slovakia, in addition to mills, Delta Frozen Products frozen-pastry plant, Delibake and Harry's Delta sweet long-shelf-life bakery products' plant, Vegilife company producing healthy food, Eureca Shops running Paneria, Fr. Odkolek fast-food outlets and Le Patio restaurants. In order to consolidate its status of a strong and successful Central-European company capable to meet all requirements of its customers, the company must perform a continuous analysis of external and internal environment.

The article stresses the importance of analysing the inflow of foreign direct investments to the countries of the Visegrad Group. In this context, what is shown is the attractiveness of the CEE countries, including the Visegrad Group, in terms of the FDI location; and there are also other factors depicted, which determine the attractiveness of regions for foreign investors. The EU accession gave the Visegrad Group countries new opportunities to attract FDI; the point is to take advantage of these opportunities. Actions at both national and regional level are constantly needed in order to enhance the location attractiveness, since the VG countries need capital to modernize their economies. The quality of the investments attracted is also crucial, as the "modern" ones will create stable bases for the economy modernization and for building of a sustainable competitive advantage.

In the market economy, agriculture ranks among the important political and economic issues. Risks associated with agricultural activity can be catastrophic. For farmers and farms, damages resulting from materialized risks represent significant and existence-threatening problems. For the state, damages in agriculture can endanger the food supply chain, cause fluctuation in employment or jeopardize the state's foreign-policy position due to lack of self-sufficiency. This is why it is necessary to discuss the methods and ways to deal with the problem, to eliminate agricultural risks or to minimize their occurrence and materialization. One of the possible ways is insurance. With regard to these facts, the author attempts to make an analysis of the possible ways to eliminate risks that endanger agricultural production and, according to this analysis, to describe the basic approaches to minimizing or eliminating the materialization of risks associated with agricultural activity. Subsequently, the author focuses on agricultural insurance systems in the countries of the European Union, and on the present-day situation in the field of agricultural insurance in the Czech Republic.

Rural villages are the sole subjects in rural area which integrate all elements acting in the rural area to one functional whole. They can be therefore taken as the pivotal element of rural development. The research was done in 2004 and was based on the search for rural villages' characteristics and exploration of the elements of regional differentiation. The project results from the presumption of difference between the rural villages given by their size, location in specific areas or on exposed roads, distance from civic centers etc. It is supposed that these characteristics have specific and significant connections with such phenomenon as the level of unemployment, the level of civic and technical facilities in villages, the activity of inhabitants and the village itself, etc. The challenge was to define problem characteristics of rural areas, which mirror significant regional differences, structure and interconnectedness of these differences and their importance for future regional development. Interdependence of particular indicators was explored by statistical evaluation.

The analysis is made in the set of the selected foodstuffs wholesales in the Slovak Republic and shows their differences from the viewpoint of the size (sale place 15 m2-1 300 m2 , storage space 106 m2-6 500 m2 ), number of workers (1-81) and yearly turnover (219 thousand SKK-2 748 thousand SKK). The main part of wholesales is operated by owners (83%) and a small part (17%) is on lease. From the viewpoint of location, the wholesales are situated in the centre of town (50%) and village (27%). The rest is located in the habitations and suburbs of town. The competitive wholesales (43%) are situated in the distance from 11 to 500 m. The highest labour productivity was obtained at the wholesale with location in the suburbs of town and the distance from competitive firms is about 500-1 000 m. Suitable results were achieved in the wholesales on lease with location in the suburbs of towns. The efficiency of wholesales was affected by the main factors, including the number of workers, size of sale place and storage space which determined up to the 92% of the volume of yearly turnover.

Land market in the Czech Republic is monitored by the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics on the sample of 24 districts (1/3 of the CR). Land prices depend on the area, culture and region of the plot. Sales of small plots (up to 1 ha) prevail. These plots are usually purchased for non-agricultural use and their prices are many times higher than prices of large plots (above 5 ha) which are usually bought for agricultural purpose. Land market is not well developed, only 0.2-0.4% of the monitored area is sold each year. But in the last years, it is increasing. Compared with land prices in the west EU countries, land market prices in the CR are low.

The ownership of land has always been the important precondition for lasting socio-economic situation and the development of the country. Despite that, there is a process of learning going on in practically all the new member countries, which are still learning that productive ability of the agriculture depends in a big degree on the stability of ownership of land and its tranquil farming. Despite many fundamental and substantial differences, we can say that hitherto development in land law was tremendous. But it also follows that significant social and economic divergences have not made full liberalisation of the land market possible without "yes, but".

The work objective is to differentiate rural land of Slovakia with aspect to the possibility of effective rye growing. The differentiation is based on pedo-climatic and production economic parameters. At soil categorization, correlation relationships between the site properties (soil and climatic conditions) and crop biological and agro-technological requirements were considered. Rye requirements were included into yield databases using the software filters in the way that the given site property excluded or limited rye growing, what was reflected in predicted production. The prediction was subsequently interpolated into four suitability categories: soils not suitable for rye growing, less suitable soils, suitable soils and very suitable soils. The database was formed and each of the Bonited Soil-Ecological Units (BSEU) was added in it as well as particular category of suitability for rye growing. By mediation of the Geographic Information System on BSEU distribution in Slovakia, the map of categories of soil suitability for rye growing was also generated. In Slovakia, there is 21% of farmland very suitable for rye growing, 23% suitable, 24% less suitable and 32% non-suitable soils for rye growing according to our calculation. In the paper, these categories are characterized in details and specified from the view of geographic, soil, climatic, productivity, economic and energetic parameters.

The Slovak milk industry has overcome substantial changes during last period and has achieved many criteria comparable with the Western Europe. From this viewpoint, we can state that the quality of milk and milk products, technological equipment and labour efficiency has been improved. Entering of the foreign capital into the Slovak milk processing enterprises increases the quality of products and the volume of processed raw material. The foreign investors choose Slovak enterprises for many reasons. These are: the limited assortment of milk products, cheap labour force in comparison with its value in the EU, cheaper material for production and the necessary energy. In the world, the process of internationalization is necessary together with fusion, strategic alliances and acquisitions, including the private or co-operative companies. The biggest foreign strategic investors are in the following joint stock companies, for example - Liptovská mliekareň, a.s. Liptovský Mikuláš (Bongrain France), Milsy, a.s. Bánovce nad Bebravou (Lactoprot Austria), Rajo, a.s. Bratislava (Meggle Austria and Germany), former Zempmilk, a.s. Michalovce, now Syráreň Bel Slovensko, a.s. (Fromageries Bel France) and others. These companies include more than 52% of the number of big industrial milk processing enterprises in total and during the last period they bought more than 52.5% of the whole milk production in Slovakia.

The contribution deals with the development of livestock since 1990. Since that year, beef and dairy cattle numbers have dropped by more than 50 percent in the Czech Republic. This decrease has been partly compensated by an increase in efficiency, yet milk production has dropped to 55% in this period and beef production to 60% compared with 1989. The declining amount of cultivated land in the Czech Republic has resulted in a decrease in the stocking rate and the corresponding production. It adversely influences the economy namely in highland areas. In this sense the high rate of permanent pastures with low stocking rate enables to efficiently exploit the EU direct payments and thus the direct payment system discriminates above all the farms in highland areas (potato and oat-growing areas and upland production areas).

The principal importance and global dimension of sustainable agriculture in frame of a strategy of civilization development is beyond discussion. The actual character of the topic of looking for ways to sustainable development is confirmed by the extensive worldwide program "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment" the purpose of which is to map and subsequently monitor the health of the planet Earth. The contribution is focused on various aspects of the non-substitutable role of agriculture regarding sustainable development on the level of developing and developed countries and on the regional and global level.

Currently, the world of business is more and more dominated by companies which possess and know how to exploit their intangible resources, in particular the potential of their employees, to achieve competitiveness. The importance of learning organisations, knowledge organisations and corporate culture has been constantly growing. The article presents the outcomes of a survey carried out with the aim of identifying attitudes of managers of agribusiness organisations to talented people and the role of these people in gaining a competitive advantage. The survey has found that Czech agricultural enterprises are somewhat special in this area and that the existing conditions affect managers' approaches and distinguish them from other large companies in other industries. It has also shown that agricultural companies do not have the same opportunities as large companies to select and develop talented individuals, and therefore these activities should be carried out, to a large extent, by universities.

The article presents the analysis of regional distribution for the approved and completed projects by 2004 under the SAPARD programme in the Slovak Republic. The distribution of funding strongly favoured powerful (innovative) business subjects which increased their competitiveness and gained the "advantage of technology advance" (which, in time may change into the rent of technology advance) associated with growth in labour productivity and high probability of investment return. The implementation of the SAPARD programme provides a strong impetus to the restructuring of businesses in agrifood industry, it accelerates and improves the selection among the businesses and economical differentiation. The bulk of the approved funding for projects under the individual measures for agriculture and processing industry within the SAPARD programme was distributed among western and southern regions of Slovakia. The implementation of the SAPARD programme, on one hand, has helped to reduce regional disparities in the vertical spatial approach by the diversion of the bulk of funding to the economically less favoured southern areas of Slovakia lagging behind in terms of infrastructure. On the other hand, though, it has increased the regional disparities in the horizontal spatial view with regard to the fact that most of the funding is spent in the developed regions of western Slovakia. Eastern Slovakia thus has become a disadvantaged and minority recipient of the financial assistance under this programme.

Horizontal Rural Development Plan is one of the programme documents for taking advantage of the EAGGF - European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund. One of the measures are payments for farmers producing in less-favoured areas. The payments contribute to sustainable use of agricultural land, maintaining of land and support of sustainable agriculture in these areas. This contribution concerns the support for less favourable areas in the CR in 2004-2006 and analyses their impact on the use of land fund in confrontation with the proposed changes of the Regulation of the Commission on support for the development of countryside through European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development for next programme period 2007-2013.

Virtual portal (VIPO) is designed to provide users with a single-point access to information, and tools to support their decision-making. VIPO illustrates the best practice presented in terms of case studies coded along three dimensions: field, domain and objectives. The second major source of knowledge is based on software packages made available to users including tutor support. The third part of the portal provides useful links to the existing databases which have the potential to facilitate decision making in agribusiness. All three pillars of the VIPO are complemented by on-line consultancy services.

In the year before the accession to the European Union, the Slovak agricultural sector reported a loss of SKK 2.4 billion and following a profitable year, the earnings were reduced by SKK 2.8 billion. The situation was caused by a number of reasons, namely reduced sales of agricultural products, damage resulting from adverse weather effects (cold weather, hail, drought and swine fever), as well as widening of the price gap compared to the year before (increasing input prices in agriculture and decreasing purchase prices of agricultural products, especially in livestock production). Legal entities and natural persons experienced mixed business success. While 51% of legal entities made profit, the figure rose to 76% in the group of natural persons. Both the agricultural cooperatives and trading companies performed with a loss. The loss per hectare of agricultural land (a.l.) was substantially lower in the case of business companies. Natural persons - private farmers were profitable over the period. The gap between the profitable and loss-making enterprises has widened. Some 60% of profitable enterprises owned by legal entities made only a small profit below SKK 0.5 million. The loss-making performance was typical for more productive areas of Slovakia. This was related to stronger effects of adverse climate in 2003.

The incorporation of Czech agrarian sector in the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU means also the application of so called "European Model of Agriculture" which reacts to a basic requirement of socially balanced and sustainable agriculture which contributes to maintenance and an improvement of the European agricultural cultural landscape. In connection with it, a new strategy of agrarian policy was set according to which the orientation of Czech agrarian sector changes in a principal way, which was focused up to now only on the production function and also its other functions become more important, above all in the environmental and social, so non-production area. One of the aspects of multifunctional agriculture is an organic agriculture, a system which fulfills visions of sustainable agriculture.

The paper is focused on the analysis of consumers' interest as one of the limit factor of demand for organic products. Consumers'interest is derived from questionnaire survey, which includes direct consumers as well as retailers with bio-products.

Knowledge Economy is an education related to the declaration and contents of the Lisbon Strategy - The Perfect Europe and a follow up strategy of the competitiveness of member states of the EU by the year 2010. The term knowledge economy can be defined as "an education about problems of upbringing and educating students, a professional education of managers and population, an education about strategies of being competitive as well as an education about reality and contents of innovating an information society". The application of the Knowledge Economy in the content of education into research and workplace consulting enriches economic theories as well as gradation of agrarian economic in the field of competitiveness and information technology. The Knowledge Economy means a world repute and maximalisation of international relations and at the same time a vision of catching up with the leaders of world economies. Present educational systems, a general and specific education of new member states, is short-sightedly oriented at regional and local education with the effort to educate "an euroengineer, an eurodoctor, etc.", into the expansion of new faculties and their entitling as "European studies, integration studies, some subjects are also innovatived with a modified agrarian and business union politics", which I myself consider to be an "educational lag behind" which is the antithesis to the attributes of catching up with the more developed.