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In all developed economies of the world there was, in the past, a significant decrease in the share of agriculture with regard to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment. However, it is still possible to find considerable differences between individual countries as well as between regions. The income of agricultural workers is traditionally lower, which subsequently leads to an outflow of population from the country into cities, and to further deterioration of the demographic and economic situation of the rural population. As adequate production of food and food self-sufficiency have been among the strategic priorities of national governments, macroeconomic policies make efforts to support agricultural production both at the national and international level. Therefore, the Common Agricultural Policy has been one of the oldest policies of the European Communities. However, this support increasingly deviates from direct support of production towards harmonic development and diversification of activities in rural regions. With regard to these facts, the authors attempt to identify the particular causal relations between selected indicators at the level of territorial units NUTS III - the regions of the Czech Republic, and to verify the actual existence or non-existence of these relations. Noticeable differences between regions have been found, measured by the share of the agricultural sector in the regional GDP and employment. Subsequently, the authors have identified a dropping tendency between the share of agricultural employment and average income. On the other hand, no relations of dependency have been found between the GDP and agricultural employment and registered unemployment. Neither has the relation between agricultural employment and the GDP per inhabitant been identified as statistically significant. However, there is a high degree of dependence between the share of agricultural employment and the GDP per inhabitant generated in the agricultural sector, between the share of the country population (population density) and the GDP per inhabitant generated in the agricultural sector, and finally between the population density and the GDP generated by the agricultural sector in the particular region (Figures 6, 7, 8 and 9). It can be derived from these facts that their economic structure and demographic situation determine the variability among regions. In the future, these regions should receive aid targeted at the development of rural regions. Identification and statistical evidence of the problems of agriculturally-oriented regions is an important prerequisite for drawing funds from the European Communities programmes and for the establishment of effective macroeconomic policy at the national level. However, despite all the conclusions given above, it can be stated that at the present time agriculture apparently neither contributes to greater unemployment nor it lowers the efficiency of the economy measured by the region's GDP.

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

Development assistance achieved remarkable success in different periods. For example, Botswana and South Korea reached the great development in the 60s after very bad situation, Indonesia in the 70s, Bolivia and Ghana at the end of the 80s, Uganda and Vietnam in the 90s. In these countries development assistance played important role in economic transformation in formulation of the development of politics. The development assistance contributed educational programs and financially supported the development of public sector. The "Green Revolution" - by means of innovations in agriculture, investments and political changes - improved the live conditions of millions people thanks to the collaboration of many bilateral and multilateral donors. But there are some failures with the foreign aide. While the formed dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko became one of the richest people in the world (and invested his property in abroad), the development assistance did not stop for many years, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) is only one example of the situation, where the permanent flows of assistance ignore or support the corruption and in suitable politics of governments. Tanzania received two milliards dollars for building the roads destiny the twenty years. But the roads were destroyed sooner, than the works could be finished because of insufficient maintenance. The study of World Bank brings the conclusions of the new conception of the development assistance: financial assistance works only in suitable political world; the lowering of poverty is possible only with working institutions - political and economic; effective assistance complete the private investments; receiving country is obliged to have public sector in function; the function of public sector is developing on the activity of civil society; patience and good ideas, not only money, can help to reforms in very unfavorable conditions.

Food safety is important due to new protection measurements applied in the growing world trade as much as the raise and continuity of life quality. In recent years, the countries have begun to face with important problems both in domestic consumption and exportation, because of the sensitivity of consumers on the safety of food products. Regarding this, in the dairy industry, which is an important sub sector of the food industry, the food safety issues has begun to gain importance in developing countries like the developed ones as a result of the world trade. Therefore the aim of this study can be stated as examining the food safety systems for dairy industry and comparing them withTurkey.

Abstract: Services become an important participant of the international economic relationships during the last 20 to 30 years. Since the sector of services used formerly to be applied rather more on the national level, we speak of the internalisation of services, which become an important article of international trade. Compared to the dynamics of world trade with tangible goods, services reach higher year-to year increases and their share in the world trade turnover still increases. The explanation lies in the growing importance of services connected to the level of the economy development and in the foreign trade with services liberalisation. The value of the services export on the world level reached approx.1.5 trill. USD in 2000. The value of the world export of tangible goods was 5.5 trill. USD in the same year, so that export of services covered approximately one fifth of the total world tangible and non-tangible goods. The share of services in the world export (tangible and non-tangible) grew continually.

Production of food and beverages is one of the Czech traditional branches of processing industry. The article tries to describe the model prediction on the sector structure development oriented on labour and personal costs in food industry sector up to 2013 and it is based on the continuous monitoring of these indicators in the period 2000-2005. Except regress analysis of time orders, there was used the method of exponential smoothing. With regard to certain antagonistic tendencies, i.e. the lasting fall of the number of workers in the monitored period but at the same time the growth of personal costs, there were projected separate predictions of these indicators up to 2013, aimed namely at the set of companies with 20 and more employees. The prediction of the selected data up to the year 2013 is based on the running results of the Research Plan of the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics (VÚZE). The probable development of the number of workers and personal costs in the individual branches of food industry is characterised.

Agribusiness has made many important contributions to the Turkish economy. These conributions related to meeting of the nation's food demand, creating added value, increasing and diversifying exports and increasing employment. While the relative importance of the Turkish agriculture sector decreases over the years, in the economy, agribusiness still preserves its place and developments. This paper assesses the contribution of agribusiness to the economy during the period 1994-2004, in terms of production and export values and the firms working in this area. Within the agribusiness, the most stable and best-developed industries were food and textile in the period concerned. Changes in the economy influences agribusiness but the basic problem that affects it is development is the integration with the agricultural sector. That is the downstream relations, which is not the desired level at all.

The paper deals with the employment of decoupled direct payments as the model of targeted lump-sum financial transfers to the farmers. It considers whether decoupled payments may alter producers' resource allocation over time and lead to effects on production. Decisive topics of influence through which decoupled payments as an instrument of income redistribution could affect production through recipient' decisions in both short and long time horizons are bringing to the attention as follows: wealth and investment effects, sector consolidation and payment basis effects in the framework of agricultural policy.

The core objectives for rural development support for the period 2007-2013 are: (1) improving the competitiveness of agriculture and forestry, (2) improving the environment and the countryside, and (3) improving the quality of life in rural areas and encouraging the diversification of economic activity. The Council Regulation (EC) No. 1698/2005 includes an unambiguous targeting of smaller and micro-enterprises to sustain job opportunity in rural areas. For this scheduled period, a minimum funding of 10% of the total EU contribution has been withheld by the Council Regulation for the measures connected with the quality of life and diversification of the rural economy outside agriculture and forestry. In spite of this, the EU Court of Auditors has concluded that rural development policy in Europe is ineffective because it continues to allow member states to adopt a predominantly sectoral approach with the primary focus on the agricultural sector (Special Report No. 17/2006). This paper deals with the possible impact of one RDP measure - the reduction of LFA payments according to farm size. Taking into account the variety of regions in Europe and the different situations at national level, it is difficult to provide a single guideline to solve the problem. Implementation without a deep analysis could lead to undesirable consequences. A specific adjustment to the situation of the given country will be advisable.

The recent implementation of the CAP Single Area Payments in the EU New Member States raises the question of whether a quick capitalisation of these payments is expected. Capitalisation of public support to agriculture into land prices indicates that the benefits are partly transferred toward landowners rather than toward producers. This distributional aspect is of particular importance in countries where a large proportion of land is farmed by producers who do not own this land. This study investigates the influence of several types of support on Czech agricultural land prices from private transactions between 1995-2001. The past period direct payments have been capitalised at the strongest rate, despite their low level and imperfections on the land market, suggesting that such support is most easily transferred to land values. A continuing capitalisation might threaten the farming activity, as farms are almost only tenanted. And because most of the landowners live in towns, there is a risk of an extreme leakage of support not only outside the farming sector, but also outside the rural sector.

This paper deals with the problems of destination management. It focuses on describing the crucial principles of destination management and consecutively on proving the functionality of these principles in practice in an area with a high potential for tourism development. In the selected South-Moravian region (JMK), we have explored whether an existing organization of destination management can be found in this region (DMC Destination Management Company) and to which extent it participates in the management and efficient development of tourism. To reach the set targets, we have used a secondary analysis of current data, a depth interview with a destination agency manager and an orientation questionnaire survey among business subjects. The results have shown that the level of cooperation between the destination agency in the JMK and the subjects of tourism is not on such a level and not as intensive as proclaimed by the South-Moravian Tourist Authority (CCRJM - the organization established with the aim of destination management in the JMK). For example, 50% of the addressed subjects have not been aware of the existence of this organization and only 10% of the companies have been addressed to cooperate with the CCRJM. The insufficient cooperation of public and private sectors appears to be the weakest segment. This causes an inconsistent presentation and isolation in preparing projects for the region development. It is the task for destination management, a new organization of tourism, to find the way how to cope with these difficulties and how to make the JMK a unified and quality destinations that would be attractive for tourists.

The rules of the European Union suppose the value added tax as the only general excise tax. The need for harmonization of this tax in the existing EU member states is obvious, but the results in this field are not entirely convincing. Also the provision of services is a problematic field among others in the implementation of value added tax. It is essential to examine the issue of the value added tax, in this case, both the possibilities of the use of the self assessment system of the value added tax by the recipient of the service compared to the accounting of service including the value added tax by a provider of this service, even if the provider of service from the EU member state shall have a permanent establishment in other member state of the customer, but this establishment is not involved in the provision of the service, as well as the inclusion of services within the so-called extended guarantee to the taxable or exempt fulfilment, when the subject provides the technical support and the assistance to its customers, such as in the case of failures of agricultural machinery, which the provider had supplied to a subject in other member state. On the basis of empirical research, it is needed to assess the results of the harmonization efforts, to identify and recommend the direction in which the European Union should take in this field. The comparison of the individual European Union countries is important here. Value added tax is, regarding its features, still an unsurpassed excise tax, even if it has some weaknesses. The technique of the selection of this tax enables to discover the paid tax at all stages of treatment and it is very appropriate, due to its features for the use in international trade. It is therefore necessary to ensure the sufficient clarity, lucidity and equal conditions for players from the European Union on the basis of the development and adaptation of the rules of the value added tax set at the European Union level within each European Union country.

: First part of the paper assesses the physical-geographical locality factors of the agricultural production in the district of Nitra. Agricultural production in a typical high production region has been analysed (structure of the enterprises legal forms, focus of production, number of employees). The second part examines the types of the most important agricultural enterprises according to the selected economic indicators such as economic efficiency, labour productivity and relative employment. These indicators are the best ones to express the economic power of agricultural entities and farming efficiency.

The paper examines the factors that lead farmers to participate in c the contract farming in the Peninsular Malaysia. The primary data was collected through a survey using a questionnaire on the total of two hundred and eight farmers from various states in Malaysia. The study utilizes the stratified sampling method. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The survey identified forty-one contract farmers. Factor analysis was carried out to identify the factors that lead farmers to participate in the contract farming. Based on the analysis, five factors were identified as the reasons for contracting, namely, market stability, and access to marketing information and technology, transfer of technology to improve farming practices, access to inputs and indirect benefit. Contract farming or contract arrangements can be a valuable source of an additional income and knowledge that can be employed to enhance the productivity of the entire farming enterprise.

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

The paper is focusing on the analysis of some aspects of changes in the economic performance of the farm sector in Slovakia during the first period after the accession to the European Union, as measured by the Economic Account of Agriculture. Authors find that the growth of agricultural goods output was the main element of the improved income generation within the sector during the first year of the EU membership. This was induced by the growth of physical crop output and new subsidies to products. Price alignment played only a minor role in the income growth within the sector. Price increases were limited to some few livestock products. The scope and range of the horizontal price transmissions might have also been influenced by the constraints on the domestic market demand, insufficient functioning of the market support institutions and shortages of marketing infrastructure.

In the last two decades, the EU trails behind the USA in both the rate of economic growth and the rate of growth of productivity. In addition, in the next 25 years, the EU will experience demographic challenges in the form of the rapidly ageing population and a substantial increase in the dependency ratio. To answer these challenges, the EU needs economic policies which will facilitate the utilization of new technologies. To do that and to alleviate the growing pressures on the European social and economic model, the significant economic reforms are necessary. The key to that is the EU-wide integration of the financial sector.

The utility value presents the main competitive advantage in the knowledge and digital economy. It cannot be achieved without modern technologies, modern organization and operation of the production and social processes. One of the Slovak government's precedences is to establish favourable conditions for the development of knowledge economy in every section. The informatisation level of the agricultural sector is continually increasing. As perspective, we can see the implementation of the knowledge systems in agricultural and food-processing enterprises. The main contribution is mainly the possibility to forecast the development and the state toward the future and the use of knowledge base for ensuring of the operational, tactic as well as strategic management.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are based on co-operation between the public and private sector. The reason for using it is a lack of public financial sources. For this reason, in most PPPs the management and financing of the project is entrusted to the private sector. In the Czech Republic, the widest development area for PPPs in the scope of the Ministry of Agriculture is probably water supply. The further areas for using of PPPs in the scope of this Ministry are the following: forestry, flood protection, adjustment of water flow, security of water sources, builging of the strategic foodstuff store. Important attempts have been made within the last year to increase the implementation of PPPs in water supply. These attempts are based on operation models similar to the BOT (Build Operate Transfer) and the DBFO (Design Build Finance Operate). In addition, the Czech Parliament adopted a law No. 139/2006 Coll., on concessions procedure and concession treaty which entered into force in July, 1^st, 2006 and which brings the legal framework for realisation of the PPPs. There are some legal barriers which limited wide using of the PPPs. It is in the case of public-private venture companies (the limitation is in public procurement law). Public-private venture companies - which refer to the situation where both the private and the public sector holds equity, and, consequently, the company is controlled by the private as well as the public sector - should be the ideal form of PPPs in the areas which are in the scope of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The article deals with the usage of the information systems and expansion of the portals. In the part "results", there is elaborated a questionnaire applied on the agrarian sector. Today, the approach to the development of the information systems is oriented to the implementation of the portal solutions, which enables us a web access to the information and applications with an effective possibility of management and administration. Here, we are able to find typical user groups with quite specific information needs, who would find the specialized web portal very useful. This is because such kind of portal could offer them "everything at once and at one place", it means all of their needs would be satisfied immediately and users do not have to waste time with an information search at other places.

The aim of the paper is to approximate the conclusions of the Trade-off model for practical usage in Czech dairies. In the contribution, there is carried on a transformation of the basic Trade - off model formula with respect to the practical usage. Then there is proposed a method of the quantification of unique factors of the Trade -off model theory. In order to measure some of these factors, there is partially used the methodology, which was proposed by Prof. Edward Altman. According to this methodology, it is possible to quantify part of the capital structure influences. The measurement is then valid for all firms in the sector. Following the results of empirical study which is carried on in this paper, one of the factors' relationship is not constant in the Czech dairy sector. This limits the recommendation to use the common model for all of the firms in one sector. When making a financial decision, it is necessary, after quantification of the capital structure factors, to analyse individual ability of a firm to utilise foreign capital.

The dynamics and forming of European agriculture are determined by many considerably heterogenous and complicated processes and trends which influence mutually and moreover they work in a different way in developed and developing countries. An attention will be paid to basic global trends, the role of the Common Agricultural Policy, the influence of agrarian markets, the promotion of multifunctional agriculture etc.

The common currency Euro is considered one of the biggest achievements of the European political and economic integration. However, it is necessary to stress that Euro was always first and foremost a political feat. Economists by and large pointed out that the EU - even in its 1992 reincarnation - is not an optimum common currency area (OCA). But politicians and some economists hoped that the existence of Euro itself may accelerate the processes toward the OCA. However, this did not happen and the divergence processes inside the Eurozone accelerated after 1999. Today, the Eurozone stands near the crossroad - where some countries may be increasingly tempted to leave.

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

The aim of this paper is to show some empirical evidence of the sustainability and decision making in dairy production in Turkey. The main material of the study was obtained from the data collected by the survey conducted in the villages in Merkez, Manavgat and Serik districts of the Antalya province. Within the context of the research, 75 farmers were interviewed in the 2007 production season. The research results indicate that the households are the most important decision maker in terms of farming decisions. 56.3% of the farmers in the small farms, 61.5% of the farmers in the medium-size farms and 41.2% of the farmers in the large farm noted that they could quit dairy production activity if they received a fixed salary.

Since 2004, the basic document which has governed liability for damage to the natural environment in the European Union is the Environmental Liability Directive No. 2004/35/EC, as amended by the subsequent regulation No. 2006/21/EC. The main purpose of the legislation was to ensure that the entity responsible for the damage pays all costs for rectifying its consequences. If it concerns damage to natural environment, the operator must undertake measures for rehabilitation, replacement and regeneration of the damaged natural resources. The primary replacement, which returns the damaged natural resources to their original state, may be differentiated from complementary replacement as compensation in the case in which the primary replacement has not provided an adequate reparation, and finally compensatory replacement - compensation for the temporary loss of natural conditions. This paper aims at an analysis of the possible means for eliminating risks due to the liability for environmental damage caused by the actions of an operator whose activities potentially threaten natural environment and may cause the biodiversity damage. Risks are assessed with regard to the risk insurability criteria for potential damage to the natural environment. The importance of risk management is stressed in the sophisticated form known as the Enterprise Risk Management. Risk management is becoming increasingly important as a part of the Solvency II concept, currently in preparation, whose first and second pillars accentuate risk management in financial institutions and the consistent quantification of the obvious, hidden and potential risks.

The level and structure of cigarettes taxation are considered to be very discussed field in these days by the effect of preference trends of taxation of consumption at the expense of direct taxation, stressing the health risks of consumers of tobacco products, externalities caused by this consumption and by the effect of existence of distortions in the market with the tobacco products in the EU states. It is possible to achieve various aims in the field of fiscal and agricultural policies of state, consumption of cigarettes, protection of national market and in the other field by the regulation of excise duty imposed on cigarettes in the EU states. The question is, in frame of excise duty imposed on cigarettes in the EU member state, whether this tax should be imposed through specific rate, ad valorem rate, or by their combination. The choice between these options depends on the laid down aims of tax policy in each EU member states.

The article describes the impact of the Sectoral Operational Programme Agriculture and Rural Development and the Rural Development Plan 2004-2006 on the rural development in 2004-2007. In addition to the implementation analysis of these programming documents, the article also describes territorial distribution of direct subsidies and state aid over the monitored period of 2004-2007. A summarized overview is given for the drawdown of all types of subsidies and their proportionate amounts. The evaluation of all subsidies has shown that most of them were paid to the Northern and Eastern parts of Slovakia, due to the agroenvironmental and direct payments (mostly LFA). The article also describes, in quantitative terms, the social and economic impact of investment subsidies from the Sectoral Operational Programme Agriculture and Rural Development and the Rural Development Plan 2004-2006, based on the monitoring indicators of result and impact. The comparison of the socio-economic development of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of investment subsidies from the SOP and RDP has shown a faster growth in income of the beneficiaries, as well as a faster growth of labour productivity. Also, the subsidies significantly helped to reduce the decrease in employment and/or helped to maintain the employment in agriculture.