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In the past decade, China has more than doubled its consumption of fossil fuels resulting in the emission of substantial amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂), which are considered to be the main cause of climate change. To mitigate climate change and ensure the continued survival of life on earth, the current level of CO_2R emissions must be cut. This study establishes a price endogenous mathematical programming (Jiangxi Agricultural Sector Model) and incorporates bioenergy technologies such as ethanol, conventional co-firing and pyrolysis to examine how an agricultural province may contribute to bioenergy development and carbon sequestration. The results indicate that under moderate energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) prices, net electricity generation reaches 6.5 billion kWh annually. Net emission reduction is affected by market operations. At high GHG prices, pyrolysis and biochar application can sequester up to 4.74 million tons of CO_2R emissions annually. However, this measure fluctuates significantly when GHG prices vary. Our study shows that pyrolysis and biochar application provide significant environmental effects in terms of carbon sequestration.

A non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique was applied to investigate the degree of efficiency and efficiency change of prefecture-level cities in the North-East China from 2000 to 2012. Mean pure technical efficiency in a DEA model with the number of agriculture was 0.79, indicating that there is a big potential for a more efficient input utilization in agricultural productivity. Decomposition results of the Malmquist index indicated that the average productivity (MALM) growth at 8.0 percent annually over the entire period in the North-East China and the major source of growth was the technical change. In order to stimulate the productivity growth, more attention should be paid to improving the production efficiency. Polices should be enacted to increase the technical investment in agriculture, to enhance the rural education and research in agriculture which may help farmers to improve the agricultural efficiency and productivity. Given the limitations of the Statistical Yearbook data, some field investigation may carry out in future studies.

In the agricultural industry, many brokers exploit the benefits between farmers and customers and decrease the farmers' income. As the technology has developed, the internet has become the best advertising medium for many industries. In light of this, this study based on the Google Earth has designed an on-line Agricultural Products Navigation System operated by mobile devices which can easily exclude brokers, and build the bridge between farmers and customers in order to increase the farmers income and customer benefits. Moreover, based on the IS success model of DeLone and McLean, by using the qualitative methodology, it is expected that this model will be able to provide system developers with the knowledge to improve the success of their systems.

Thai economic growth lags behind all other ASEAN countries because its export dependence along with the political and economic vulnerabilities. With the growing bioeconomy worldwide, Thailand needs a clear bioeconomy roadmap as a new growth engine for its economy. Four potential clusters to build bioeconomy in Thailand include the bioenergy, bio-based industry, bio-food and bio-agriculture, and bio-medicine and health. There are roadmaps for only the first two clusters. The paper discusses the potential bio-based products for the bio-food and bio-agriculture as well as bio-medicine and health and proposes the use of the Pracharath strategy to build bioeconomy in Thailand with the main objective of creating the sustainable economy. Since a smart community is a key driver for the sustainable economy, five steps to smart community proposed in the paper will immune communities in the rural area of Thailand, make them self-reliant, and remove the dependency culture.

The paper addresses social inclusion. It aims to investigate how social inclusion was conceptualized in the main Czech policy documents related to the EU. The text argues that one of the tools of social inclusion - social economy represented by social entrepreneurship and social farming - is a sort of innovative practice. The findings suggest that the understanding of social inclusion evolves within policy documents towards highlighting social economy through matching its theoretical concept with political measures. However, social economy is still not considered by the documents as an innovative approach. If analysing projects funded under Czech Rural Development Programs, social inclusion in rural areas is not the main theme, especially in regions exposed to the risk of social exclusion. In addition, the main actors (NGOs or social entrepreneurs) who are said to support social economy or social farming are not active in submitting projects in rural areas under the Rural Development Program 2007-2013. These actors have not yet used their potential towards developing social economy.

For the period 2007-2013 LEADER became the fourth axis of rural development policy. One of the main characteristics of LEADER is that it adopts a bottom-up approach. Local Action Groups (LAGs) have to define and implement area-based local development strategies (LDSs). In this paper, we examine the relationship between variety in the LDSs implemented by LAGs and employment safeguarding over the programming period 2007-2013 in Andalusia, the most populated region of Spain. Firstly, we construct several indicators to capture differences in the number of projects carried out, the grants awarded, the investments made and the safeguarded employment. Secondly, we carry out an exploratory factor analysis. We use cluster analysis to classify LAGs applying similar LDSs. The results obtained show that there is no ideal strategy for employment safeguarding and that spending high amounts of money in a few numbers of projects does not guarantee success. Thus, most LAGs do not show any clear specialisation pattern but obtain moderate results in terms of employment safeguarding. This supports the idea that LAGs need to have sufficient flexibility to find a balance among the different objectives of the rural development policy and to translate this balance into the funding of projects.

Estimation of farm economic sustainability and viability became more topical when redesigning the Common Agricultural Policy which should stabilise farm income and make agribusiness more viable and sustainable (typically in Czech areas facing natural constraints). The key question is how to calculate the income of farms or farm households not only to survive but also to grow sustainably. The article summarises and compares knowledge from 51 studies to provide a comprehensive discussion on different ways how to measure economic viability and sustainability to set income support for farms in the areas with natural constraints optimally. The authors found family farms and off-farm income as important limitations of FADN database (Farm Accountancy Data Network) for evaluation of the economic sustainability of farm household. Moreover, some financial ratios (Return on Assets - ROA and assets turnover) are not suitable viability indicators for farms with a high share of hired land (typically large legal entities). Joining family farms and legal entities, the authors recommend using modified Farm Net Value Added (MFNVA) allowing for opportunity costs of own land and non-land assets. The average wage in the economy or region is a better proxy for opportunity labour costs of unpaid work rather than average agricultural wage.

In recent times, consumers and politicians from Central and Eastern Europe complain that some food products sold in their regions are of lower quality and less healthy if compared to those sold under the same brands in Western Europe. This situation, that concerns exclusively food produced and sold under even well-known multinational brands, is brought back by many food Multi-National Companies to the necessity to adapt their products to local tastes and gastronomic traditions. Many tests and studies carried out at European level prove poorer-quality products offered by Multi-National Companies to Central and Eastern Europe consumers even if with the same packaging and prices (or even more expensive) of Western countries. This is a very novel issue, and to the best of our knowledge, there is not any scientific paper yet dealing with this issue. Therefore, the aim of the study is to add new knowledge to this field and to shed light on the multiple aspects linked to dual quality food. The analysis, essentially theoretical, has pointed out that in addition to the traditional problems of market failures, there can be positive implications in terms of opportunities of competitiveness for multinational food companies.

The paper deals with Czech households' subjective views on food waste. It examines households' attitudes to food waste, including the causes of food waste. The primary data were obtained via a questionnaire survey with 1 582 respondents. The analyses allowed the identification of three categories of Czech households with different attitudes to food waste and its causes. These findings provide a basis for a proper selection of corrective measures aimed at amending or even completely transforming the current behaviour.

The contemporary regional economics sees clusters as geographically close groups of companies and other connecting organizations that work together while they also mutually compete. Despite the fact that the naturally born clusters exist for centuries and their formation is driven primarily by market factors, there has been prevailing in the recent decades a positive view of the controlled and driven development of clusters in developed countries. Organized clusters are being called the cluster initiative. In recent years, there was a relatively rapid development of cluster initiatives also in the territory of the Visegrad countries due to the national programs and subsidies from the EU structural funds. This paper reacts to the situation. The aim of the paper is to identify clusters currently existing in the tourism, agriculture and food sector in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia and to analyze their regional dispersion, structure and activities.

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 objective of the paper is to highlight the impact of agricultural performance on working poverty in the EU countries, in the 2008-2013 period, for identifying some measures that need to be taken to increase the agricultural performance so that the in-work poverty reduces. The comparative analysis shows that agricultural performance, according to the agricultural indicators analysed and the phenomenon of working poverty vary significantly across the EU countries. The correlation and regression analysis results suggest that the high level of employment in agriculture in some EU countries can be mainly explained by the small scale agriculture, a high share of subsistence holdings and a low agricultural labour productivity. The results of the multiple regression analysis highlight that working poverty at the EU level is influenced positively by the employment in agriculture, and is influenced negatively by the economic size farm and land productivity. Moreover, the results show large cross-country differences in terms of agricultural performance-working poverty link, fact which emphasizes the need to take specific actions to improve efficiency of the EU agricultural sector for reducing the working poverty. The findings of the study can be useful for the policymakers to formulate policies for a decent and productive employment within a sustainable development of agriculture.

The world meat market demands competitiveness, and optimal livestock replacement decisions can help to achieve this goal. In the article, there is introduced a novel discrete stochastic dynamic programming framework to support a manager's decision-making process of whether to sell or to keep fattening animals in the beef sector. In particular, the presented proposal uses a non-convex value function, combining both economic and biological variables, and involving uncertainty with regard to price fluctuations. The methodology is very general, so the practitioners can apply it in different regions around the world. There is illustrated the model convenience with an empirical application, finding that the methodology generates better results than actions based on the empirical experience.

A standard concept of biogas plants - strong maize silage concept is due to its high economic advantage as the maize silage is one of the most effective substrate for anaerobic digestion in matter of biogas yield. Increasing demand for maize silage, reflected in a rise of its price, endangers the economic effectiveness and therefore economic sustainability of the biogas sector. This situation also creates negative externalities related to upward pressure on food prices and lower livestock production. Moreover, biogas plants focused primarily on maize silage could increase the area of arable land for growing maize for energy purposes and decline the production of crops for human nutrition. The paper focuses on examination of consequences of maize cultivation intended for biogas production in case of Slovakia. The results show the impact of biogas production via anaerobic digestion on area of land used for maize production and live bovine animal production.

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.

With development of the market economy, the views concerning the importance of ethical norms in business activity are developing. Ethical orientation in economics, has been popularized for several decades by e.g. French centre "Economie et Humanisme"¹, established by a renowned Dominican, L.J. Lebret. Tourism, including rural tourism, represents an economic activity which has its specific ethical dimension. The goals of this paper are to characterize the basic values that are voluntarily accepted and used in tourism in rural areas in Poland and to identify the ethical norms that guarantee the realization of these values. The authors adopted the basic values-goals that should be recommended in rural tourism. They also formulated specific professional and ethical norms that support realization of the values, which include: humanity and standards for realizing the principle of humanity; the cultural and material conditions of living in rural areas; economic activity, including tourist activity that improves rural living conditions; innovative attitudes towards modernization and improving the quality of rural tourist services; and values that support the development of sustainable tourism in rural areas. The theoretical investigations concerning axiological problems were supplemented with the results obtained from a national-level empirical survey that was conducted in rural areas in Poland.

In a time of a constant change, a company with high-quality, talented employees not only has an advantage in the competitive environment but it is also a more attractive proposition for the potential employees. It is also a 'great place to work' for the existing employees. The article therefore focuses on the approaches to implementing the strategic talent management which are taken by the agricultural and forestry companies. The paper investigates the position taken regarding the talent management in theory. It is based on the aims of a primary survey, the purpose of which was to develop a deeper understanding of the supporting theoretical concepts underpinning the company approaches to talent. The objective of the work is to identify the main components of the strategic talent management based on the primary survey of companies operating in agriculture and forestry. This is accomplished by evaluating the data obtained from the primary analysis of the methods and approaches used on 101 farms and other agricultural companies. The data comes from the manager surveys for which a single manager represented the given company. The mono-dimensional and multi-dimensional statistics were used to evaluate the data. The results indicate that in 62% of the companies examined are familiar with the principles of the talent management and that the talent management forms part of the mission of the company (48%). A deeper analysis is used to further examine the differences in the approach of the companies included in the study. The paper contains an in depth discussion of the concept of the strategic talent management, as well as identifying the main processes connected with it. Moreover, the paper presents new research findings by defining and validating the main attributes of the strategic talent management (TM); additionally the gap between the awareness of the top management of the talent management concept and its use in practice is found and discussed.

The goal of the paper was to define recommendations of a suitable business strategy for SMEs in the area of primary agricultural production. First, the external environment was analysed to define suitable recommendations for the industry, and also to discover opportunities and threats through fitting strategic analyses, that affect the aforementioned businesses. Secondly, it was necessary to get familiar with the internal environment and functioning of specific businesses in the industry (namely those that operate in the Western region of Prostějov at the foot of the Drahanska Highlands) and to evaluate their efficiency to define their strengths and weaknesses. The paper demonstrates that there is a wide range of means that can be taken advantage of when defining fitting strategies for agricultural businesses, e.g. the Porter's Five Forces Model, the IFE and the IE Matrix, the SWOT Matrix as well as the general strategies by Ansoff. Among the most important recommendations for increasing the competitiveness of SMEs in the agricultural industry, there belong: taking advantage of all the suitable agricultural subsidies, taking advantage of accredited agricultural advisors, making sure that the legal requirements of governmental bodies are met, increasing revenues for arable farming (through a good quality seed stock, chemicals and fertilizers, the foundation of suitable storage facilities in order to postpone the sales of the grain after the harvest season), creating sales cooperatives/associations to balance the competing force of buyers, rejuvenating the workforce, solidifying the ownership structure in the businesses, entrepreneurial diversification (electrical energy production), increasing quality in animal farming.

Extreme differences in agricultural holding size, existing not only among the countries within the EU as a whole but also within the farm structures of the individual countries, create a considerable uncertainty for establishing the optimal political and economic instruments to support sustainable rural development. The study explores the determinants influencing the spatial volatility of agricultural holding size at both the EU scale and the national scale of the Czech Republic, the latter of which has the largest mean agricultural holding size in the EU. While some factors are identical for both the EU and the Czech Republic, other effects can only be evaluated at the European or international scale, and still others can be evaluated only at the national scale. The only factor found in this study to be significantly associated with the agricultural holding size on the European scale was the wheat production. On the Czech national scale, land consolidation, unemployment rate, and soil fertility were significantly associated with the agricultural holding size. The study found that in the Czech Republic, the number of farms was increasing, while at the same time the agricultural holding sizes were decreasing. This is an opposite trend in comparison to the EU as a whole, where the number of farms is diminishing and the sizes increasing.

The paper is an attempt to address the advantages and risks connected with the wave of financial globalisation, with a focus on its impact on financial policy in European agriculture. The aim of the paper is to identify the basic conditions of the functioning and change of the financial system of agriculture under the conditions of the globalisation of financial markets. Financial globalisation, also referred to as financial integration or openness, is understood as an increase in global ties and interdependences caused by capital flows. Potentially, globalisation can bring a lot of benefits, which are manifested in an acceleration of economic growth and decreased fluctuation in consumption, which should further improve the level of overall prosperity. On the other hand, however, internationalisation of financial flows entails a range of threats, including the possibility of crisis.

Agricultural land represents a country's natural heritage. Therefore, land protection is an issue that is the subject of various legislative measures, also including those that affect land fragmentation. Land fragmentation is a problem that hinders the effective use of land. In 1995, Slovak lawmakers adopted Law 180/1995 Coll., which prevents the fragmentation of land under a minimum size. The aim of this paper was to determine whether Slovak legislation concerning land fragmentation is effective and prevents this phenomenon. We compare the Slovak legislation with the legislations of other countries, and, further, we describe the existing situation with respect to land fragmentation in the individual regions of the country according to the requirements of Slovak legal regulations. The results include proposals for the potential amendment of the legal regulation to ensure the effective prevention of land fragmentation.

Organic farming has become a topic that receives an increasing academic as well as popular attention. This study examines the financial differences between the organic and conventional farmers, as well as their income volatility. Based on the Student's t-test, the regression analysis and the matched-pair investigation on a sample of Czech 291 organic and 4045 conventional farmers over the period 2009-2013, the study indicates that the organic agricultural companies outperform the conventional companies in the terms of profitability. However, their asset turnover is considerably lower. No evidence of different income volatility has been found.

In the paper, the price volatility was examined. The authors used 650 weekly observations from 2003 to 2015. Such a long period of analysis helped to reveal periods with high volatility. The objective of the paper was to recognize price volatility of agricultural commodities in Poland. The authors chose beef, pork and wheat markets to show the differentiation of price volatility. It revealed periods of large and small volatility. The global market situation impacted Polish agricultural markets with the opening markets and a greater access to the new markets. The periods having the strongest impact on Polish agricultural markets were the integration with the EU, the global crisis in 2008, and problems in the EU zone. The prices of analysed agricultural commodities differed in various EU countries. The prices of wheat increased most in France, Hungary and Lithuania. The prices of store cattle increased most in the years 2004-2015 in Estonia, Sweden and Luxemburg. The prices of pigs increased most in Malta, Sweden and Cyprus.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the development of agrarian farms in Visegrad Group (V4) countries, primarily in terms of results and the most important production inputs of production factors and their efficiency in the period from 2004 to 2013 based on the EU Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). The results of the analysis show that if farms in the V4 countries want to achieve the same performance as developed countries, they must invest more in purchasing intensification factors and adjust the structure of assets production specification. It will be necessary to stop the reduction in the numbers of livestock and to strive for growth in gross farm income, mainly through the processing of agricultural raw materials.

This review focuses on Czech implementation of standards for soil and water protection called Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC), with linkage to the European Union (EU) level. I investigate different elements of adaptive institutional economics: (i) summarise current knowledge regarding the social reasons for introducing GAEC; (ii) assess the evidence linked to GAEC to better understand the potential as well as boundaries of formalizing cause-effect links; (iii) clarify the pertinence of producers' claims on costs accruing from GAEC implementation. These three points highlight the thesis of this paper: implementation in farmers' practices of the theoretical concept of sustainability in terms of bridging together economics, society and the environment. The economic reasoning for GAEC introduction within adaptive institutional economics stems from the relational positioning of the knowledge of the costs of the impact of agricultural land use on other characteristic rural land uses. GAEC are needed, albeit the size of support obtained by producers surpasses the costs of complying; therefore, the result pays off for farms. We have learned that GAEC implementation is important from regional to EU levels and that its role is more related to economic institutional adaptation than to regulation. Adaptation of institutional economics is therefore feasible, making it possible to understand GAEC as a network which manages and enables knowledge transfer linked directly to regulation. Institutional economics can link sustainability with farmers' practices and accounts for the behaviour of the farmers. In this review, I find that, for society, it is necessary to require measurement of agri-environmental outcomes for water resources, soil and biodiversity through GAEC at appropriate scales. These scales are likely to be relevant to adaptive institutional economy localities perceived by the rural public.

The paper addresses the LEADER approach in the Czech Republic. Using documentary research and content analysis of the appropriate documents and the Local Action Groups information sheets, the paper firstly outlines the evolution of the LEADER approach in the Czech Republic (the paper points out the difference in understanding LEADER in the EU /focusing on capacity building and the use of intangible forms of capital/ and in the Czech Republic EU /focusing on investments/). The paper also analyses the participation of farmers and the farming related actors in the LEADER approach (approx. 30% of local action groups are composed by those actors, however, they mostly do not aim /similarly like non-farming actors/ at developing partnership but want to achieve the investments into production; that is why the Czech local action groups are rather quasi-partnerships; it is also reflected in a very low number of strategies aiming at the "adding value to local products" which is the closest to farmers /but it is the less opted theme: only 6% of projects/). The paper ends with the analysis of projects implemented under the LEADER scheme where the farmers participate. It shows that more than the integrated strategies, the Czech local action groups prefer the strategies of the multi-sector type. The paper also points out that the publicly available information about the activities of the local action groups is not sufficient, although the groups are funded from the public budgets. This fact makes the analysis more difficult as for the scientific merit but also contradicts the principles of democratic governance.

In this study the principal changes in Polish cooperative banking sector over the past two decades were presented. The primary data obtained from a survey of bank presidents, performed in 2007 on a nation-wide sample of 100 cooperative banks, were supplemented by the banking statistics from the Central Statistical Office and the Polish Financial Supervision. Research provides the evidence that cooperative banks, in general, took advantages from the consolidation process. While the number of the banks was declining, own funds per bank, bank offices and staff were expanding. The banks managed to adjust to the EU requirements by having implemented limits on loan concentration, procedures for counteracting money laundering and meeting minimum capital requirements. They introduced system of the deposit guarantee, monitoring and control of credit risk and adapted new regulations. The cooperative banks for the most part retained their original characteristics. The sector still plays the prominent role in serving and financing of agriculture and rural development.

This study is in the light of the liberal global Indian economy that has led to a competitive environment. In a changing scenario of the global business environment with a highly competitive market economy, the HRM practices and organisation culture will provide an edge to an organisation. This study is an attempt to understand the effect of the HRM practices and organisation culture on managerial effectiveness in public sector organisations in India. This study revealed that the HRM practices and organisational culture are a strong predictors of the managerial effectiveness of the public sector organisations surveyed.

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.