2015 – Volume 117

This study analyses the impact of government subsidy schemes on farm production capacity, technical efficiency and use of idle production factors (land and labour) in the olive and vineyard sectors of Albanian agriculture. The paper uses a quasi-experimental design by applying a propensity score matching method based on a structured survey conducted in 2013. The results show that the government subsidy scheme had a net positive impact on areas planted with olives and grapevines, and on part-time on-farm employment. On the other hand, no significant net impact was observed regarding farm size and crop yields. This is the first time that such an in-depth impact assessment of government subsidies in the agriculture sector has been carried out in Albania, thus the results will be useful both for scientists and policy makers in agriculture and rural development.

The oil produced from sunflower seed is primarily used for human consumption. It can substitute for other edible vegetable oils, such as rapeseed oil, processed into biodiesel in the European Union. This paper assesses the influence of crude oil futures on new crop sunflower seed futures in Hungary during the growing seasons of sunflower by applying standard cointegration analysis for the period 2004-2013. Tests were performed for the entire period and each sunflower growing season. For comparison, the influence of Paris rapeseed futures on sunflower seed futures was also assessed. The contrasting estimations for the global and seasonal characteristics of the variables suggest that standard cointegration analysis may not be appropriate for multiannual price series of agricultural commodities with strong seasonality in production because it will not capture the periodical shocks in supply and demand. The results are briefly discussed from the aspect of the fundamentals of the sun-flower seed market.

Faced with society’s increasing expectations, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy uses environmental management as an increasingly critical criterion in the allocation of farm subsidies, with a shift in focus from production and area-based subsidies to payments for supplying public goods. There is an increasing demand to assess the ecological and environmental performance of farms as public money spent on provision of environmental services requires justification. The objective of this research is to strengthen the basis of the concept of farm-level environmental performance assessment. Firstly we give an overview of indicator-based sustainability assessment tools. Even though there are several different tools developed globally, and the themes and indicators for the assessment of environmental performance are very similar, there are significant differences in terms of data survey among them. Secondly we describe the development and field testing of the ‘Green-point system’ developed in Hungary. This system is able to measure the environmental performance of farms and their value/ capability of providing public goods and sustaining ecosystem services through a framework of farm enterprise calculations and assessments. The Green-point system fits well into the stream of yet scarce approaches and eff orts, which in several European countries aim to introduce and strengthen...

This paper discusses changes in population and labour in family farming in Poland. We analyse the size and socio-demographic characteristics of the farming population, the degree of utilisation of own labour resources on the farm and the assessment of labour inputs in family farming. Our research uses data from IERiGŻ-PIB field studies as well as general statistics. In comparison to the European Union as a whole, the socio-demographic (education and age) structure of the farming population in Poland is relatively favourable. There has been a significant reduction in the share of persons working exclusively on the family farm while the share of those with off -farm employment has increased. Around 500,000 persons who are not registered as unemployed and may be considered as redundant from the point of view of farming activities and represent hidden unemployment. We conclude that employment on family farms has a decreasing role in reducing the imbalance in the rural labour market in Poland.

This paper presents the institutional and spatial determinants for the development of social and technical infrastructure in municipalities (gminas) in Poland. According to the empirical results, there are significant differences between various types of gminas in terms of the level of development of technical and social infrastructure. Similar levels of technical or social infrastructure are associated with a significantly higher level of economic development in urban and urban-rural gminas than in rural gminas. Spatially, the position of gminas in relation to larger settlement centres and communication routes affects the development of technical infrastructure to a greater extent than social infrastructure. The relationship between infrastructure development and selected economic and social characteristics of municipalities is a feedback loop in which the relative wealth of a local administrative unit stimulates the development of the infrastructure while at the same time benefiting from this fact. This means that the present use of European Union Structural Funds for the development of infrastructure does not contribute to closing the gap in development. Sustainable development is largely the result of institutional factors related to infrastructure. It is therefore advisable to move away from a purely redistributive approach in this regard to targeted territorial support of the...

Food safety risk analysis and health technology assessment (HTA) are two different paradigms sharing multiple common features. Decision makers in both fields have the responsibility to promote the health of society deciding on intervention opportunities based on disease burden, intervention feasibility, effectiveness and cost, equity and ethical considerations. The evolution of HTA in the last two decades has resulted in the establishment and widespread use of quantitative tools to support and justify evidence-based decisions. In contrast, decision making in the food safety domain is still a qualitative process rendering ad hoc weights to all aspects considered. This review evaluates whether HTA methodology is suitable for quantitative decision support in food safety risk analysis. We conclude that cost-utility analysis (CUA) could better serve the priority settings in food safety risk management than the currently (rarely) applied cost-benefit analysis (CBA), considering either broad resource allocation or specific safety measure decisions. Development of multi-criteria decision analysis tools could help the introduction of consistent and explicit weighting among cost and health impacts, equity and all other relevant aspects. Cost-minimisation and cost-effectiveness analyses would be relevant for ‘threshold’ and ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ approaches to single food safety risk assessments, respectively. Assuming a future...

The improvement of agricultural productivity using technology is an important avenue for increasing output, reducing poverty and tackling land degradation. However, there is disagreement about which type of technology is most appropriate for smallholders. While some promote the need for natural resource management practices and low external input, others advocate the need for input intensifi cation. This study has examined the nature of the relationship that exists between the two broad categories by using fertiliser and certifi ed seed as input-intensive technologies and manure and soil conservation as natural resource management practices. Alongside this, the paper has also identifi ed the factors that facilitate and impede the probability of those technologies being adopted.

This paper assesses households’ awareness of the causes of drainage basin degradation and measures their willingness to pay for improved drainage basin management. Cross-sectional data were collected from 398 randomly-selected households. The spike and bivariate probit models were applied to determine the mean willingness to pay and factors affecting households’ willingness to pay, respectively. Agricultural expansion, population pressure, changes in weather conditions and climate change were identified as the main causes of degradation of the Dechatu drainage basin in Dire Dawa Administration, Ethiopia. The study also identified appropriate mechanisms and bases of charging a drainage basin management fee from the sampled respondents. The mean willingness to pay from the spike model was computed to be ETB 111 per annum for five years whereas the mean willingness to pay from the open-ended elicitation method was computed to be ETB 78 per year. The higher mean willingness to pay from the spike model might be due to anchoring effect from the dichotomous choice format. The result suggests that any drainage basin management system needs to consider the monthly income, location, sex, initial bids, occupation, marital status and educational level of the affected households.

This article examines the variations in mean technical efficiency estimates in organic agriculture and the factors that explain the observed variations. A three-stage process was employed in data collection. Firstly, journals on organic agriculture and related disciplines were identified and searched. Secondly, several publishers’ websites and databases, namely Cambridge Journals, Elsevier, Emerald, Oxford University Press, Sage, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley, among others, were covered. Databases included AgEcon Search, CAB Abstracts, DOAJ, EBSCOhost, Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. Thirdly, the reference lists of studies found in the first and second stages were searched to identify additional literature. In all, 42 studies constituting 109 observations published in the period 2002-2014 were found. Unlike existing literature on technical efficiency quantitative reviews in agriculture, this article employs a battery of tests to select the appropriate solution for multiple observations from the same primary study, as well as the appropriate functional form for the selected fractional regression model. The mean technical efficiency of organic agriculture for the period of study and the effects of other study characteristics are thoroughly discussed.

Russia is often considered the most prominent country to become a leader on the world grain market. However, several issues slow down Russia’s agricultural progress, for example: a lack of infrastructure and investments, unequal regional development and inefficient use of production technologies. This study therefore examines the grain production potential of Russian regions by employing a modified approach to stochastic frontier analysis that allows us to include not only production technologies, but also indicators of the country’s heterogeneity and diversity among regions. The results obtained indicate that climate conditions in combination with the level of human and institutional development, and infrastructure have significant effects on the production structure of regions and therefore should not be neglected while assessing regional policies and production potential.