Fulltext search in archive

This study deals with the founding and development of agrarian political parties and movements in selected postcommunist states (with the emphasis put on the Czech party system in the early 1990's). The topic is discussed from the point of view of classic political science theories, namely the historical conflict approach of Stein Rokkan and Seymour Martin Lipset, complemented with Derek Urwin's theory regarding emergence of agrarian parties as a means of defense of country against urbanization. The results of research into the urban - rural cleavage and its influence on the genesis of agrarian political parties in selected post-communist countries after 1989 seem to support the above mentioned theories (even though those were originally formulated for a much earlier period when the Western party systems were first coming into existence. These can be applied also to the Czech environment, where several profession-based political parties were established in the early 1990's, some of which were concerned with the defense of peasants' and farmers' interests. The attempts to create profession-based parties in the Czech political system were destined to fail for several reasons. The first was a striking ideological profiling of the bipolar party spectrum, causing general parties to pick up the themes and voters concerned with economic recession, and radicalization of electorate. The second reason lied in the diminishing numbers of potential voters, a result of agriculture modernization and general urbanization of society, which caused that the city-country conflict was reflected in the election results only marginally. The result was similar to other post-Soviet states, with a specific exception of Poland: agrarian parties and movements lost their former influence.

During the years of transition to market economy, a variety of farming types has evolved in Slovakia. Corporate farming is still pursued on about 80 per cent of the total agricultural land area, but a gradual increase of individual farms can be observed. A large portion of the registered individual farms is producing both for the market and for the self-supply of households, but the importance of specialised commercial farms has been growing during the recent years. Their share in the total number of registered individual farms can be estimated as 25 per cent and they specialise as a rule on cash crop products. The average production area is 130 hectares, but income differentiation is wide-ranging within this group of farms. The lowest income strata (which represent about 50 per cent of these farms) receive eight times less income, than the highest one - represented by less than 2 per cent of cases.

The article deals with the comparison and evaluation of the development of economic indicators, such as the costs, yields, economic result and profitability in the Czech and Slovak Republics for the period of years 1997-2000. The economic indicators are evaluated and compared on the basis of sample survey results of the RIAFE Bratislava and RIAE (Research Institute of Agricultural Economics) Prague. The first part contains the evaluation and comparison of the costs, yields and the economic results for agricultural production and its branches recalculated per 1 ha of agricultural land (a. l.). The second part contains the evaluation and comparison of the production intensity indicators (per hectare yields, utility), costs per 1 ha, 100 feeding days and per unit, and agricultural production realization prices. Based on these indicators, cost profitability of the selected plant and animal products is quantified.

The article deals with the evaluation of competitiveness in milling, feedstuffs, pasta, spirits, wine, beer and malt industries in the Slovak Republic. It further evaluates the impacts of economic policy tools on the stated sections of food industry by means of the PAM analysis. The impact of the policies on income, costs and profits of food production in the selected food industry branches has been discovered, based on the effects of divergences and coefficients of nominal and effective protection.

The paper deals with the particular stages of development of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the last forty years. The process and impacts of CAP reforms are analyzed for the particular production industries of agriculture. The paper also presents a detailed description of Agenda 2000 and mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2002 that brought about many proposals for the future working of CAP after accession of Central and Eastern European countries.

Farms, farmers, farm families, and even farm policies have changed in the United States and Europe over the decades since World War II. Now it is time to bring the methods of farm policy analysis and the scope of data collection up to date. Agricultural economics, by tradition an empirical discipline, can offer important insights into the design, implementation, and effectiveness of policy. To succeed in this century, though, requires an emphasis on understanding micro-economic behavior at the level of the farm household. The paper presents fundamental aspects on methodology for micro-level farm policy analysis and data requirements for application of its intruments.

The transition to the CAP and admission to the internal market triggered a shock wave in Austria which caused fundamental changes in the country's farming and food industries. Behavioural patterns stuck in traditional routines and petrified structures began to break up. The resulting thrust towards modernisation has been a major success of the EU integration. Eastern enlargement, about to be embarked on by the European Union, will have a greater impact on Austrian agriculture than the country's accession to the EU ever had. Farmers will have to brace for a loss of market shares and an additional pressure to adjust. The rural regions bordering the accession candidates will be particularly hit and thus require special attention in terms of economic policy measures. Agriculture and rural regions in Eastern Europe will profit from the EU-membership.

The paper presents fundamental ideas of European social market economy that are to be applied to formulate the "European Model of Agriculture". In connection with the needs of further development of the Common Agricultural Policy, food strategy and regional policy, some challenges to the modern and perspective strategy of agriculture and food production in the EU are formulated. A new European challenge to strengthen the principle of solidarity, sustainability, multi-functionality and subsidiarity is an appreciable point of departure to solve the problems in Czech agriculture.

The paper analyses the economic and policy gap between the agriculture in Slovakia and the EU member states from the perspective of the future accession of this country to the Union. As it concludes, the deterioration of terms of trade during the transition period creates also problems for the accession negotiations, because this fact seems to legitimate the equitable implementation of the CAP in all member countries after the East-enlargement of the Union. The paper is arguing, on the basis of income simulation, that that the Commission proposal on reduced direct payments for the newly admitted countries would, in case of Slovakia, generate an improvement of the sectoral income only if they are topped by rural development measures.

The contribution supplies an outline of indicators, through which benefits from projects will be followed, that are prepared for usage in the LFA areas. It will be necessary to use the monitoring system for realisation of measures suggested on the base of the research project. The main task is to follow the efficiency of adopted measures for the individual environment sections, to evaluate efficiency of subsidies and finances from the EU funds. From the hitherto results, it is obvious on which measures are the prepared projects oriented at and by what indicators it will be possible to evaluate outputs, results and impacts of realised projects. The prepared system will enable feedback on decisions regarding efficiency of the realised measures in the monitored areas.

One of the conditions of accession of Slovakia into the European Union is the existence of a developed land market. At present, the official land price is mostly used in the evaluation of agricultural land. The price was calculated on the basis of normative production and normative costs required to achieve such production. As the land market gradually develops, market prices come into being; reflecting the effect of real market forces. With the full-fledged market prices, the task of official prices will be just an informative one. The land market prices will gradually assume all the tasks of the current official prices of the agricultural land.

The objective of the trial in the test station was to evaluate productive performance with respect to sire-line No. 101, 102, 103 in C-position for LWs × (LW×L) genotype in pigs. The productive performance as to growth capacity, feeding intake and quantitative traits of slaughter value was examinated for 136 hybrid pigs divided in three groups of offsprings of LWs boar No.101, 102,103. The feeding of all pigs were ad-libitum. On the base of obtained results, one could say that inside the LWs-breed, considerable differences exist between lines, importantly affecting the overall economics of fattening.

The paper provides some of the interim results of the Fifth Framework PRISMA project dealing with the impact ICT on government and citizen services in Europe. In the paper, the concept of one-stop government is described, the current state of the adoption of ICT both in Europe and the Czech Republic is briefly outlined and recommendations for the Czech agriculture derived from the major trends within the development of the use of ICT for better citizen services as well as for enhancing competitiveness of rural businesses.

Description of village and landscape sustainable development: ecosystems in the landscape, types of the territory utilisation, protection of natural resources, way of living. As to the sustainable development of country regions, we can consider these priorities: the renewal and development of villages, the protection and the preservation of the heritage of countryside, the development and the improvement of infrastructure, the support of tourism and crafts, services for country economy and finance. The development of multifunctional agriculture and forestry should be concentrated: in the less favourable regions and the regions with worse natural conditions (LFA), necessary agroenvironmental arrangements for zones with ecological restrictions, afforestation projects, the protection of water resources, the improvement of life environment and its protection, the preservation of landscape, the improvement of the care of animals.

This article is divided into four parts: the first is concerned with the state subsidy and support policy in the year 2001. The second part of the contribution mentions the subsidy development in production and marginal areas in the period 1996-2001 and its influence on the economic result of an average farm. Another part monitors the grant volume and the economic result at a selective sample of the identical firms in the time period from of the year 1997 to the year 2001 in reference to the farm position. The last part will deal with an evaluation of the grant volume where the subsidies are divided according to the subsidy titles in the year 2001 in an average agricultural firm farming in a certain altitude.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is of the character of a highly protective policy of the EU Member States. It includes a number of measures distorting the market directly and influences the farmers' incomes depending on their production. There have been two reforms of the CAP so far and the third one is prepared with intention to come into force from 2006; it is called Mid-Term Review (MTR). This reform is concentrated on keeping and increasing consumers' credibility and shifting to more competitive agriculture more orientated on market needs. The main Reform proposals include horizontal issues, i.e. Decoupling, Modulation/Degressivity, Cross-compliance, Farm Advisory System, IASC, Rural Development, and market issues concern dairy, cereals, rye, durum wheat, dried fodder, potato starch, seeds, nuts, rice, set-aside, carbon credit, beef. Besides the above mentioned goals, it is necessary to ensure conditions for rural development together with demands on environmental protection and improvement, so-called second pillar of the CAP. The attempt of cross-sectional summary and analysis of the MTR impacts for the EU was made in the article based on results of six studies performed by universities and DG AGRI in Brussels.

The paper continues the debate over the nature and the role of social capital in the Czech agriculture. This issue is not marginal because social capital is also emphasized in the Czech SAPARD Plan. The paper develops the thoughts of J. Chloupková and C. Bjřrnskov published in this journal in their paper "Could social capital help Czech agriculture?" (No. 6 in 2002). Differing form mentioned authors, this paper coins dual nature of understanding social capital. This understanding forms the background of the concept of social capital in the works of French sociologist P. Bourdieu. Dual concept of social capital interconnects the most often use of understanding social capital as coined by such authors like R. Putnam or J. Coleman (social capital is understood as supra-personal collective element enabling the co-ordination of activities of free individuals with equal rights thus enabling the effective operation of certain system as a collective entity) with understanding of social capital related to social status of an individual which creates the hierarchies related to power thus enabling an individual to achieve his/her goals. Using empirical data and the case study, the paper outlines the application of dual understanding of social capital in the analysis of some processes in the Czech farming. Dual concept of social capital enables to explain some circumstances, which might be in the case of one-way orientation of understanding social capital presented in rather simplified way (e.g. if and what form of social capital was weak or destroyed in the Czech agriculture and which continues to exist). This fact is documented through the case study of the changes inside large-scale farms and outside these farms (in the field of their external relations). This study documents the presence of both forms (dual concept) of social capital. Similarly, the dual concept of social capital is used in the analysis of social structure of the Czech agriculture. It is done in the comparison with the model of agriculture in European Union and in the projections into the questions of the action of actors in agriculture.

The cultural landscape and rural areas are considered to be a key component of the European cultural heritage. The European Landscape Convention, which the Czech Republic signed in the autumn of 2002, was also formulated in this sense. Consequently, the reform of care of monuments cannot be left entirely to official workers, but is becoming an important subject from the standpoint of maintenance of the functional and demographic stability of rural areas. It is necessary to point out that the care for monuments in Central Europe is at a crucial point, that could be described as a crisis. The reasons are as follows. 1) Time extension of care for monuments as well as the spatial extension of care for monuments. 2) Care for monuments has somewhat neglected to explain and defend its significance - consequently, a great many private owners of cultural monuments are not fully aware of the ideas, on the basis of which limitations are placed on their rights to manage their property, for the good of the cultural heritage. 3) Aesthetic conclusions are increasingly important in deciding what is and what is not a cultural monument. However, this can readily be influenced by the influx of very attractive, but worthless "popular" architecture, currently being introduced by a great many development companies. 4) Care for monuments represents the execution of a particular activity rather than a fixed formulated intellectual system of canons. 5) Even under the best economic conditions, the state as such does not have the means to provide appropriate care for the cultural heritage in state ownership (including state land in the poorer areas) and is certainly not capable of creating a motivation system within its framework for searching for new ways of using this property without abusing it. 6) In general, it can be stated that condition of democratisation within the care for monuments certainly does not attain the level of participation in environmental protection. 7) Care for monuments, especially in Central Europe, tends to continue to emphasise simple conservation of monuments and is minimally concerned with reanimation of the monument fund. This is why the care for the cultural heritage must again formulate its purpose, especially in relation to the decrease in the importance of national states, globalisation and, simultaneously, regionalisation of the world.

In the framework of Slovakia entering into the European Union, there was done a PHARE-ACE survey in years 1999-2000. The name of this survey was "Micro-economic analysis of farming households restructuring in pre-accession period to the EU". The survey was finished in 2002. This survey was done in two regions of Slovakia, characterized by different natural conditions, production and economic conditions. This project was aiming not only at private farmers but also at other legal entities producing agricultural products. The monitored group consisted of 412 private farmers, farming in average 43.2 ha of agricultural land. Most of them are farming on 0-2 ha of agricultural land (20.8%) and on 25-100 ha of agricultural land (20.1%).

The main idea of the paper is to evaluate the state and development of financial structure of selected agricultural co-operatives in accounting periods from 1994 till 2001. Assets financial stability constitutes an ability of an enterprise to create and balance an accurate relation between assets and their financial sources. The results of the research work document a positive tendency in financial structure in favour of equity capital (Table 1). On the other hand, there have been problems with borrowed capital mainly with the liabilities from business relation. An increasing level of earnings can be assessed positively as well as the participation of new loans in the financial basis of enterprises (Table 3).

BORM (Business Object Relationship Modelling) is a methodology developed to capture the knowledge of process-based business systems. It has been in development since 1993 and has proved an effective method, which is popular with both users and analysts. This paper presents BORM, its tools, and methods via a case study of the agrarian information system. BORM is based on the combination of object-oriented approach and process-based modelling. Also, an advantage of BORM is the small number of concepts required combined with a considerable expressiveness. In this way, BORM is in the tradition of pure approach established over the past years by structured modeling techniques.

The main focus of the future solutions will be sharing of knowledge. The coming systems will be designed and implemented as advanced distributed interoperable Web services that will share data, information, knowledge and services across Europe. The innovative systems will also implement advanced functionality for mobile data access; location based services, personalised and position sensitive services. The interoperability on the level of data as well as services will be important topic in next years. The WirelessInfo project was one from the first worldwide practical implementation of GIS interoperable standards on mobile platform.

The incorporation of the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) to the common agrarian market of the European Union is an entrance the saturated market solving problems with surpluses of main agricultural commodities. That is why an increasing of competition among both current member states and the new members has been anticipated. The question related to productivity of factors as well as technology level influence on competitiveness on the occasion of lower prices of agricultural commodities that could bring about shift of trade between agricultural enterprises and food processors in the first stage of processing within commodity chain into some of new member countries (or changes within them) and steer flows of some of agricultural commodities utilised as raw materials. The decisive position of the second stage of agricultural products processing, characterised by highly finalised products, probably will push forward the existing member states, especially the main producers and major exporters of finalised food products in Europe. Their interest in generation and expansion of this kind of market with highly finalised food products on the CEECs food markets would be expected. Moreover, the "demand driven agriculture" implying qualitative criteria such as food safety and precaution, favourable method of production, environmental impact etc., presented by agricultural policies in last decade and for future, is largely influenced by final stages of agri-food commodity chains. Distributors and well-established processors are those who "translate" the consumer's demand to agricultural producers. Those decide significantly about the dimension, structure and market share of agricultural production in concrete area in essence. This situation has influenced effectiveness of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) exactly. Based upon the last reforms of the CAP in the EU evaluation, the significant changes of commodity markets regulation tools and a new approach partly related to income stabilisation policy partly to support of technological change and restructuring in wider social and regional aspects of the CAP are demonstrated there.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform in 2003 represents the entry into the third phase of the CAP. The final shape of the reform packet is a result of a compromise between external and internal interests of the EU members. The external interests, such as the liberalization of the agricultural trade under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and EU enlargement, represented a common platform that in principle did not create a barrier between the member's positions. On the other hand, internal interests of the members affected significantly their positions. The most important internal interests may be classified as follows: the EU budget spending, level of farm subsidies, effects of the reform on farm employment, farm income, rural viability, consumers, environment, food safety or animal welfare. Positions of the individual EU members were a function of the agricultural structures and competitiveness. Coalitions of the EU members were created during the reform negotiations: reform-liberal group, cohesion group, conservative group and the group of specific interests. Aims of the future members of the EU (10 candidate countries) in the reform were not to deteriorate their EU entry conditions and to guarantee equal treatment, comparable with that of the EU-15. The analysis of the EU member's positions under the CAP 2003 reform is an inspiration for defining of the Czech Republic's position, as a new member state, in the agricultural area.

This paper introduces partial results of the research project QC 1140 aimed at the efficiency of enterprises operating in the system of organic farming, especially considering the use of grassland linked with cattle management. Economic evaluation of cattle management in the system of organic farming is compared with conventional enterprises. Economic evaluation applies to dairy cattle and beef cattle. Proposals of the measures will be formed with respect to the results of analysys, which should contribute to the support of organic enterprises and to better satisfaction of the increasing demand for organic food.

This contribution describes eight variants of the distribution of the direct payments and their impact on the farm economies in the years 2004-2006. For this purpose, selective set of 152 farms was divided in accordance with production regions: maize-growing, beet-growing, potato-growing, potato and oats-growing and uplands1. Possible demands for standard direct payments depending on the farm situation in 2002 and demands for payments set by different variants of the simplified system of direct payment distribution were figured to each of observed farms. To be comparable, individual bonuses were converted per 1 hectare of the farmland and to be considered more objectively, the eventual subsidies in terms of HRDP were calculated to the farms. In conclusion, all mentioned variants were compared from the point of view of their impact on the farm economies in different production and climatic regions.

By progression of the expanding use of the International Accounting Standards, fair value is being pushed ahead instead of standard historical costs. The extension of the International Accounting Standards for financial instruments and long-term assets leads to the publishing of real net income of the enterprise. The necessity to express the fair values of assets for accountancy places specialists of this profession in a new position of professionals having a common language with investors. This trend started deepening when the International Valuation Standards Committee began to co-operate with the International Accounting Standards Committee more closely. This caused the harmonization of basic terms used for valuation of property.