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The article brings out the findings about economic efficiency of agriculture and its commodity sectors after the accession of Slovakia into the EU. The adoption of the CAP had a positive impact on the growth of the off-market and total income but at the same time, its production efficiency decreased and the production structure has changed. Less efficient sectors of the crop and livestock production declined. Regarding the aspect of financing of the agricultural sector, the European resources, mainly the direct payments, were determined. The total subsidies into agriculture increased in comparison with the pre-accession period. The volume of direct payments including the complementary national direct payments reached the maximum level in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

This paper explores the agri-food export dynamics in the New Member States and the Old Member States of the European Union during the enlargement process. The analysis relies on two different approaches based on the similarity and the sophistication indices of exported goods using a disaggregation at 95 items. The analysis shows that different and somehow divergent paths are in place. On the one side, the Czech Republic and Poland are involved in a quality catching up process and increase their competitiveness. On the other side, Bulgaria and Romania seem to be still trapped in the low-quality segment of the agri-food market with a decreasing competitiveness performance in the richest segment of the European market.

The paper presents key results regarding a possible reform of the Common Agricultural Policy direct payments, based on a scenario analysis by the CAPRI (Common Agricultural Policy Regionalized Impact) modelling system. Combining aggregate programming models at the NUTS 2 level with a global spatial multi-commodity model, it enables depicting the impacts of different policy and economic scenarios from regional to the global scale. The paper discusses simulated impacts on farm income and agricultural markets from implementing the European flat rate hectare payment corrected for the purchasing power disparities across the Member States while reducing the overall budget outlays for direct payments by 50% and dismantling the remaining coupled support to ruminants. The results are an outcome of a comparative static analysis against a reference scenario which assumes the Health Check policy in 2020. The model results suggest a drop of the agricultural gross value added by 9% at the aggregate EU27 level compared to the reference scenario. Impacts differ between the Member States groups, Member States and regions, depending on the share of premiums in the income from agriculture, specialization and competitiveness of production. The largest reduction is projected for the suckler cow herd, dropping by 6% compared to the reference scenario. The drop is caused by removing the coupled support and affecting mostly the herds in Spain and France.

Collusive oligopoly is an oligopolistic market model with several companies producing the same or similar products (services) and acting in the market as a monopoly. The goal of the paper is to find out whether the collusive oligopolies are created in the food-products market, in what range the cartel agreements appear in the given sector and whether they can notably influence the price level of the food products and therefore have an important impact on consumer demand in the Czech Republic. The result of the analysis is that, although a substantial part of the agro-production arises outside of the oligopolistic structure (in conditions of monopolistic competition among small agricultural producers); the trade with these products is mainly held in oligopolistic sectors.

In 2004 and 2007, twelve New Member States (NMS) joined the European Union (EU), causing several changes in the field of agriculture. One of the major changes was the transformation of the national agri-food trade. The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of the EU accession on the NMS agri-food trade, especially considering the revealed comparative advantages. The results suggest that the intensity of the NMS agri-food trade has increased significantly after the accession, though there was a serious deterioration in the NMS agri-food trade balance in most cases. It has also become evident that the NMS agri-food trade was highly concentrated by country and by product, though the concentration has not changed significantly after the EU accession. Moreover, our analyses highlight one of the most important characteristics of the NMS agri-food trade structure - the focus on the agri-food raw materials in export together with the agri-food processed products in import. As to the NMS agri-food trade specialisation, the diversity among member states becomes apparent. Almost all countries experienced a decrease in their comparative advantage after the accession, though it still remained at an acceptable level in most cases. As for the stability of the comparative advantage, the results suggest a weakening trend, underpinned by the convergence of the pattern of revealed comparative advantage. By estimating the survival function to the sample, it can be observed that the accession has radically changed the survival time of agri-food trade, meaning that the revealed comparative advantage has not turned out to be persistent in the period analysed. From the policy perspective, there is a clear need for structural changes in the NMS agriculture and agri-food sector in order to tackle the negative tendencies of the national agri-food trade. The most important long-term goal should be the production and export of higher value-added processed products based on domestic raw materials.

The Republic of Macedonia is in the process of integrating into the European Union (EU) and adjusting its policies through reforms in policy, regulations and institutions. This paper attempts to provide an answer to the question: what would be the impact on the Macedonian livestock, dairy and grain sectors of Macedonia integrating into the EU. In order to forecast the impact of the EU accession, the research uses the partial equilibrium model as a comprehensive tool for modelling the complex nature of the agricultural markets. The model simulation foresees the changes of the modelled sub-sectors in production, net-trade and income. The baseline scenario predicts a positive development for almost all selected commodities, with the exception of the beef sector, which is highly uncompetitive prior to the accession. Three EU accession scenarios foresee positive developments in the beef, lamb and cow's milk markets, while a negative development is expected in the pig meat and grains markets.

In the literature of contract farming, most of the studies focus on the functions of risk managements and reducing transaction costs. Only a few study the effect of contract farming on the productivity efficiency or profitability. Literature in the crop sector is especially lacking. In this paper, we use a unique farm-level dataset (Agricultural Resource Management Survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture) to examine the effect of contract farming on the farmers' average return for the corn, soybean and wheat producers. The matching estimation is used in the nature to compare the farmers' average return with or without participating contract farming. We first run a logit model to calculate the propensity score from the farmers' contracting decision problem. Then, use the propensity score to match farmers using the contracts and not using the contracts and compare their average returns. The empirical results show that contract farming has a positive effect on the corn and soybean producers' average return and insignificant effect on wheat producers'.

The aim of this paper was to study the coffee and cocoa price volatility in Côte d'Ivoire and to understand the mechanism of price stabilization. Thus, this paper shows that the international prices and the farm gate prices of these two products are strongly dispersed around their respective average, from one year to another and within each year. This paper proposes a model of partial stabilization which makes it possible to highlight an alternate mechanism of the coffee and cocoa price stabilization which is relatively efficient compared to the mechanism which currently exists. It shows that a marketing board in the Ivorian coffee and cocoa sector, which constitutes a buffer stock and uses it in a strategic way, has the advantage of reducing significantly the volatility of the international price and the farm gate price.

Agrarian trade of the Czech Republic and Slovakia has undergone very significant changes in the period since the break-up of Czechoslovakia up to the present, which have influenced its commodity and territorial structure. The process of dividing the state, building a new business structure and the EU accession influenced the current form of Czech and Slovak agricultural trade and also particularly the competitiveness of Czech and Slovak agricultural and foodstuff products in relation to the EU market and also in relation to the world market. The process of transformation of agricultural production and trade in both countries has also affected their relationships. For this reason, the primary objective of this paper is to highlight the changes that have occurred in relation to the Czech and Slovak agricultural trade performance development - and in particular the changes in the mutual export and import operations are analysed. During the period 1994-2010, agricultural exports from the Czech Republic to Slovakia became considerably more dynamic than those in the opposite direction. Czech agricultural and foodstuff products have gradually established themselves and have gained comparative advantages over Slovak agrarian production. As a result of this development, a gradual increase of the negative balance of Slovak agricultural trade has occurred in relation to the Czech Republic. Since the Slovak agrarian sector has in recent years significantly decreased its own production capacity, in the future a continuation of the current trend can be expected.

The purpose of the study is to examine the current situation in the food processing sector in Tirana/Albania regarding the quality management systems and the availability of information regarding quality and safety of the food and beverage products, in decision-making for improving the quality of the products. The specific goal of the study is to provide information for policy-makers in the field of agro-industry (food industry), on one hand, and on the other hand, also to provide some information, related to the quality assurance systems (QA), for the managerial staff of food industry enterprises to help them in orienting their decisions towards improving the quality management. A stratified random sampling was applied for selecting the sample of enterprises 35 out of 120 (official number from the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Consumer Protection in Albania) with the number of employees more than four. We constructed a questionnaire and a face to face interview was conducted for gathering the data. A descriptive statistics and regression methodology was used for the study in order to present and describe a picture of the food and beverage industry in Tirana district. We draw a general conclusion that there is an association between applying the quality management standards and operational markets. The test analysis shows that there is a significant association between applying the quality management standards and operational markets, the Fisher's exact test 0.001 < 0.05. Only a small percentage of enterprises (around 23% out of 35 included in the survey) have established the quality management systems in Tirana, while 77% do not apply these standards, despite the source of information gathering that all enterprises orient their production towards the consumer preferences.

Agriculture is an important sector in South Africa, and the impact that education and human development would have made in this sector via non-white small scale farming was limited through biased policies of the apartheid era. Due to apartheid laws, South Africa found itself with high levels of unskilled labour force. This study seeks to find the impacts of literacy rate and human development indices on agricultural production using Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds Test approach to co-integration. A long run relationship among the variables, agricultural production (agriculture GDP), literacy rate and human development indices were found. Literacy rate has a positively significant effect on agricultural production in the long run while Human Development Index has a positive and significant impact in the short run. This indicates that the apartheid regime fell short in recognizing the positive effect of education in the agricultural sector by denying a descent education to the majority of non-whites which were farm labourers or small scale farmers. This study provides some policy recommendations.

The processes of globalisation and concentration have been also penetrating into the Czech agro-food sector and market. Utilising information from foreign sources and developed countries, the paper tries to present a complex view on the Czech situation from the structural and institutional aspects. Based on limited Czech information sources, the market structure in the individual links of the food chains is presented, together with the hypothesis about the sequence of the market power in the present Czech agro-food sector: input suppliers and retailers - farmers - processors. The paper also implies possibilities of the state to suppress negative effects of globalisation and concentration, especially as regards the adjustment of the Czech market regulations to the EU ones.

The paper is a part of the solution of the research plan of the FBE MUAF in Brno, No. GAMSM 431100007, and it is focused on the analysis of factors influencing competitiveness of the wine-growing and viniculture. This paper is based on the hypothesis that the competitiveness of the viniculture and wine sector could be influenced, amongst other things, by specific national conditions as defined by "Porter's diamond". This essay deals with factor conditions like the total area of vineyards, the average per hectare yield of grapes, the total wine production and wine consumption including the foreign trade with this commodity. The comparison of the chosen national conditions is made within the EU member states and also within six candidate countries - Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

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.

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.

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.

The paper examines the role of social capital in Czech agricultural sector. It is argued that social capital, just like economic capital, can be employed as a resource for the improvement of economic performance of agricultural enterprises. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of primary data and an analysis of the selected indicators of social capital is presented. These include personal social networks, membership in agricultural associations and access to sources of information. Following the results, it is argued that the presence of informal personal ties displays a stronger relationship to the entrepreneurial success than formal membership in agricultural associations. This outcome suggests a comparatively strong role of social capital in the dynamics of the sector.

The paper aims at improving our knowledge about the response of farmers to a major instrument of the rural development policy in Poland. Close cooperation with the managing Agency was established in order to collect and analyze the data included in the application forms. They served as a basis for calculating linear correlations and descriptive statistics, which in turn, wherever possible, were compared with the relevant data for the entire farming population in the region under study. It turned out that our sample was characterized by a significantly higher level of education and bigger holdings than the national or regional averages. Furthermore, we observed that the SAPARD contributed to the backward contractual market channel integration in the agri-food sector. Finally, it was found out that Polish farmers showed a very limited interest in those schemes that promoted specialization of their farms, contrary to the assumptions endorsed in the Operational Program.

The presented paper investigates the technical efficiency of small dairy farmers in India using the stochastic production frontier function approach. The study reveals that building the supply chain can increase the efficiency of dairy farmers, as the milk producers who are part of a cooperative supply chain experienced a higher technical efficiency as compared to those who do not follow the modern supply chain practices. The milk producers in the supply chain are found better crisis managers as their inefficiency is the least attributed to their own decisions. The possession of the crossbred livestock, schooling of the manager and the institutional finance have been found affecting the efficiency of the dairy farmers positively and significantly. The study recommends the expansion in the supply chain network of the cooperative milk societies for enhancing the efficiency and profitability of the dairy sector along with the provision of more crossbred livestock and an easy availability of finance.

Traditionally, the banking sector has not accounted for the temporary loss in a customer's income, at any stage of the credit life, caused by the changes or the loss of employment, income drops in business, the establishment and development of new projects of agricultural crops with different income levels, or other contingencies that can arise in the today's economy. To address this problem, the present study constructs a phased model of one mother equation, from which a series of equations of financial mathematics are derived as a response to several needs of credit beneficiaries. The proposed model consists of one scenario, based on a mother equation. The scenario corresponds to credits with reduced or increasing payment instalments, postponable payment periods. Of the mother equation, 8 explicative variables were solved for a total of 9 phasing formulas for credits with three levels of payment. Our model, in contrast to the traditional one, incorporates postponable payment periods and jumps in payment instalments in any period of the lifetime of the credit due to a temporary loss in the customer's income and changes in the credit user's income.

The development of renewable energy producers in rural areas creates new job opportunities for the countryside population. The decentralized manner of renewable energy in small cities is one of the ways how to meet the rural and small scale energy needs in a reliable, affordable and environmentally sustainable way. In 2010, the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague has finished the participation in the European IEE project RES COMPASS. In mutual cooperation, with seven partners from the Great Britain, France, Spain, Greek and Finland, the University has been involved in the extensive research concerning the impact of the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) on the future European labour market. The RES COMPASS project meets the objectives expressed by the New Skills for New Jobs Initiative of the EU and stressed also other initiatives, namely the Green Jobs Initiative, the UNEP initiative as well as the requirements of the International Trade Union Confederation and the International Organization of Employers in 2008. The RES COMPASS programme strategy was based on the implementation steps in three mutually supportive components: The first component Comparative analysis of the methods of identification of skill needs on the future labour market based on the renewable energy sources was concerned in the young generation of the today's students. The second component Career Orientation test was developed as a tool for the potential young people thinking about a future career in the emerging area of renewable energy. The third component focused on the future business opportunities for small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) in the RES sector. The paper informs about findings of the third component New businesses for SMEs in the RES. Realistic possibilities of the development of SMEs appear to exist in the provision of more complex services reacting to (1) needs of more rapid renovation of the morally depreciated devices, (2) interest of inhabitants and producers in the installations of at least two different autonomous alternative energy sources, (3) creation of informal groups of users who will share various energy sources, (4) need to support the installation of energy devices with other measures - energy audits and projects.

In the Czech Republic, the sector of viniculture tried to use the period before the entry into the European Union (1^stMay 2005) for the maximum development of resources needed for its both quantitative and qualitative advancement. The legislation concerning this sector was changed and harmonised with the legislation of the EU. The total acreage of vineyards was expanded and another 7 thousand hectares were planted. The size of business units changed as well. For the time being, the production potential of this industry is 19.3 thousand ha of vineyards, more than 18 thousand wine growers were registered and there are nearly 600 producers of wine. In this sector, there are approximately 20 thousand jobs and the consumption of wine is gradually increasing and equals 16.5 litres per capita per year. As far as the prices of grapes are concerned, it was found out that they were relatively stable in the period under study and that the price of blue varietals is higher than that of white ones. The Czech wine import is constantly higher than the export, both in volume and financial value.

The paper is focused on the actual problems of agricultural producers' incomes. Currently these become one of the monitored descriptors of maintaining of social stability in agriculture and in the countryside. There is not judged the height and the income development in the article, but the attention is paid to their structure. Concretely, the relation between incomes, which come from the entrepreneurial activity of producers, and the supports, which farmers get in the frame of the Common Agrarian Policy, is monitored. The aim is to draw attention to the possibility of a certain future disproportion towards strengthening of subsidiary means in the total incomes, which could dampen the own entrepreneurial activities. At the same time, it is necessary in this context to solve also methodological aspects of income level monitoring in agriculture. The European Union (Eurostat) makes available several variants of monitoring. Nevertheless, it is essential that the methodology was unambiguous and transparent, so that the incomes in agrarian sector could be unambiguously quantified. Last but not least, the attention is called to a strong influence of the knowledge approach within fulfillment of the European agricultural model.

Tax harmonization in the European Union has the greatest development in the field of value added taxation, but differences still can be found. Those differences influence not only the farming business. The paper is aimed on five European Union member states - Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Hungary. Based on the European Union regulations in the field of value added tax and the practical experience during its application, it is possible to identify the critical areas and to contribute to its correction and to provide the value added tax neutrality and efficiency on the European Union territory.

Several studies have analyzed the spread of technology by the multinational enterprises. The conclusions obtained are unsettling. Multinationals benefit more from the local branches in terms of knowledge than what they contribute. In the agro-industrial business cluster, multinationals are present as supply companies (e.g. seeds and machinery). However, they also play an important role because, in most cases, they constitute the company demand (retail distribution chain). In this context, this study intends to verify whether multinationals, by means of these two forms of interaction, encourage the use of generic technology, acting as a vector (carrier) that transfers (diffuses) technology throughout their branch networks. In this sense, we analyze the role of multinational companies within the cluster comprised of production and marketing companies, as well as the auxiliary industry for agriculture in the Almeria province (Spain).

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 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 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.

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.

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.