Volume 117 - Issue 1

Our study determines the competitive positions of the dairy sectors of Hungary and the other European Union (EU) Member States in the light of the abolition of the milk quota. We analyse the recent market positions of the EU Member States, the changes in the relationships between global, EU and Hungarian milk procurement prices, and the medium-term forecasts for the international markets for milk and milk products, including the results of our own model. In most Member States, milk production is below the quota level, although the most competitive countries are paying substantial penalties for excess production. The medium-term projections and the price relationships underline the fact that, due to the liberalisation of the milk market and the rapid rise in global demand, the impacts of global market developments in the EU will be further enhanced. Owing to sustained international demand, the EU’s export opportunities will improve, reducing the pressure on the internal market, and this will have a spill over effect on Hungarian milk prices. Although in terms of trade balance and quota utilisation Hungary is one of the least competitive Member States, the concentration, modernisation and selection processes that have taken place in the country’s dairy sector in...

The study assesses the employment dynamics of LAU1 regions in Czechia (Czech Republic) in the period 2001-2011 using the territorial approach. It is operationalised on the basis of typological regions. Regions are differentiated fi rstly by their rurality according to the OECD methodology and the development of non-agricultural employment is used as the second differentiating characteristic. This refl ects the regional differentiation based on the character of regional employment development potential. The specifi cs of rural regions are highlighted. Employment dynamics are assessed in the light of the process of employment restructuring both in its territorial and sectoral characteristics. The results illustrate employment in the service sector to be a viable driver of employment development regardless the degree of rurality but in absolute effects conditioned by its value. Furthermore, employment development is conditioned by the sectoral structure of regional employment. Components of employment development are identifi ed by application of shift-share analysis. The strength of the competitive effect describing the existence of locational advantages for specifi c sectors is further relativised to calculate its relevance for employment change. In conclusion, the existence of locational advantages has only a minor impact in terms of its relative size on employment change that...

The main hypothesis behind the paper is that creating an entrepreneurial team learning environment is a way to increase human and social capital in rural regions. Our work, based on literature review and primary research, tries to show that this process could support a shift in people’s attitudes from being reactive to creative and also interdependent. The results of a Delphi survey show that all four ‘spheres’ of the Quadruple Helix model in rural development (government, science/university, business/industry and civil society) should play a role in the development of a learning environment, but that more importance should be attached to ‘pull’ type of learning designed to draw out people and resources as needed to address opportunities and challenges. In a second survey, among farmers in the Hungarian settlement of Mezőcsát, we found significant differences in the use of information channels by different age groups. Personal meetings are preferred by older farmers and the Internet by younger farmers. With regard to the Quadruple Helix model spheres, from the government sphere farmers’ advisors play the most important role while from the business/industry sphere the most important relationship for farmers is with their peers. We conclude that the four spheres must create an...

A brief overview of rural Romanian phenomena and processes in modern history reveals that rural areas and small rural households were highly stable systems, providing social and economic security. In all history, except during the communist period, small-scale agriculture was and continues to be the main provider of jobs in the rural labour market in the absence of other non-agricultural employment opportunities. In all times, consumption of self-produced food, supported by small farms, has had a leverage effect against poverty. More than that, the statistical information shows that small farms achieve higher levels of economic performance compared to large farms by diversifying their production structure and, through that, they make an important contribution to national food security. In the post-communist period (i.e. after 1989) in Romania, these functions and roles of the small farms have been restored and are widely recognised. If the meaning of ‘socio-economic resilience’ is the ability of an individual, of a household, community, region or country to resist, to adapt and to recover quickly after a crisis, shock or change, the economic and social functions and roles assumed in the transition period by small Romanian rural farms give them the attributes of a resilient answer of...

More than 90 per cent of Italian farms have a usable agricultural area of less than 9 ha, even if over time there has been a growth of the average agricultural area per farm as a consequence of rural out-migration. This paper compares, using a nonparametric model, the technical efficiency of smallholder family (diretto coltivatrice), co-operative and limited company farms during the period 2000-2011. The diretto coltivatrice farms and the co-operative farms had higher levels of scale efficiency than the limited company farms, with a scale efficiency value equal to 100 per cent in ten years out of twelve. The average technical efficiency of diretto coltivatrice farms was higher than those of co-operative and limited company farms. The second part of the quantitative analysis used the self-organising maps (SOM) proposed by Kohonen. The SOMs indicated that the size of the agricultural area has a direct impact on the technical efficiency of farms and on their level of income.

In the paper the scale of investment in agricultural equipment in Poland in the years 2009-2012 is investigated. The research concentrates on FADN region 785 as it has on average the largest farms in Poland. Thus its agriculture is the most advanced in terms of convergence with EU-15 agriculture and presents the highest potential to compete on the European Union (EU) market. Investment in machinery, equipment and means of transport is the most common kind of investment projects and the fi rst that is undertaken by farmers who wish to develop their farms. The results show that although the average scale of investment is growing it is still insuffi cient given the average level of usage of fi xed assets in Polish agriculture. The EU co-fi nanced support for investment can be seen as an additional source of investment fi nance, with only about 12 per cent of farms making use of public support in their investment projects. The average value of such investment is several times higher than in the case of farms using other sources of fi nancing their investments. Most investment projects are fi nanced from own resources – retained profi ts.

This study empirically examined the effects of the participatory approach on the adoption of new crop varieties and agricultural practices. Particularly, we focused on the social network structure and examined how the introduced technologies diffused through networks in rural Ethiopia. Our empirical results indicate that if farmers knew and trusted fellow participants, the probability of adopting a new maize variety increased by 25 percentage points. However, this network had no statistical impact on the diffusion of new agricultural practices. We conclude that the participatory approach has great potential in the adoption of new crop varieties through the social networks of farmers in Ethiopia.

For a business, knowing current stakeholder product knowledge is essential to infl uencing behaviour. What do consumers think and feel about biomass residential heating? An assessment of consumers’ semantic structure about a biomass residential heating product: pellet stove/furnace, reveals that consumers perceive the product as natural but laborious to maintain, and dirty/smelly. An exploratory analysis of the industry’s marketing communications suggests that the industry is not addressing the ‘ease-of-use’ issue.