2017 – Volume 119

Consistent with the trend witnessed in other European countries, in recent years there has been an increasing demand among Hungarian consumers for products purchased directly from farmers. However, no research has been published on the determination of clusters of consumers of short food supply chain (SFSC) products in Hungary. This study describes which groups of consumers are more likely to purchase such products, and their reasons for doing so. In the summer of 2013, 1,015 randomly-sampled adults were asked to complete questionnaires during face-to-face, on-street meetings with trained staff. The survey explored their willingness to support direct sales and production of local foods, their perceptions of product reliability, and their attitudes toward global supply-driven systems. As it was not possible to identify a clear structure of factors determining opinions, perceptions and attitudes directly from the results of the questionnaires, principal component analysis was performed, and K-mean cluster analysis was used to partition the respondents into five clusters. These were labelled 'Favouring imports and large farms, 'Favouring small farms', 'Informed and empowered consumers group in favour of local farms', 'Universally positive' and 'Unconcerneď. This method was effective in identifying groups of potential target consumers. The level of support for local foods...

This paper presents a critical discussion of the concepts of farm-level viability, sustainability and resilience, which are typically discussed separately in the literature. While farm-level viability frequently focuses on measurable economic factors, sustainability is comparatively more elusive because of its added social, cultural and ecological dimensions. Resilience, in turn, is unambiguous in the sense that it requires particular conditions, but is achieved in dynamic ways. A traditional resilience strategy in agriculture globally is co-operative action, involving farmers working together to enhance their viability and sustainability, often achieving resilience. We draw attention to agricultural development models that are distinctive because they leverage co-operative action in and between family farms in agricultural communities while pursuing integrated viability, sustainability and resilience strategies. We focus on the prospect of such rural development models, particularly a values-based supply chain approach, and identify crucial considerations and future research needs.

This paper attempts to identify the main factors influencing the decisions regarding educational choices of rural youth from Cluj county, Romania. In order to achieve this, data collected in three waves of survey, in 2007, 2011 and 2015, were combined. The three surveys used the same methodology, thus allowing us to test the stability of the outcomes over a period of eight years, to highlight the main changes occurring in this period and to test statistically the factors of influence on a larger sample. The results show that the share of those who intend to study further slightly increased in the period 2007-2015. Regression analysis lead us to five factors that have a statistically significant influence on continuing education: the parents’ attitude towards continuing education, the age, the number of siblings; the school performance and the computer skills of the respondents. Some other individual, family and locality-related variables also correlated significantly with the intention to study further. Based on the conclusions, some policy implications are discussed.

Building on transaction cost economics theoretical framework, we examined the determinants of long-term business relationships between farmers and buyers in the Albanian dairy chain in a context characterised by weak institutions and lack of formal contract. Logistic regression analysis was employed to test the model on primary data collected from a sample of 315 Albanian farmers engaged in the production of sheep and goat milk. The study results support our hypotheses that trust, uncertainty and investment in specific assets are key determinants of long-term relationships. Implications at managerial and policy-making levels are discussed. At a managerial level, dairy owners and managers need to build trust with farmers and mitigate uncertainties as a precondition for long-term relationships. At the policy level, the government subsidy schemes need to be further refined in order to motivate farmers to increase flock size and strengthen vertical relationships in the dairy value chain, the latter being a precondition also to achieve traceability and improve standards.

There are problems in the functioning of the food supply chain related to price transmission and value-added distribution. Vertical price transmission analysis is an important research area in the aspect of the assessment of impact on the welfare at the producer, processor and retailer levels. The paper investigates vertical price transmission along the whole milk supply chain after the end of European Union milk quotas in the Slovak market using a vector error correction model. Monthly farm-gate, processor and retail prices in the Slovak Republic covering the period from 2010 to 2016 were used in the analysis. Using the Johansen co-integration technique, empirical evidence has been found for two co-integration equations between farm-gate, processor and retail prices. We show that short-term and long-term bilateral causal relationships exist between prices at different market stages. The estimation of the price transmission elasticity supports the assumption that price changes are not transmitted efficiently from one level to another. However, symmetric price transmission exists between farm-gate and processor prices for whole milk in the long term. The perfect price transmission may also be due to recently emerging and strengthening the producer organisations that enable producers support their bargaining position in the supply chain.

A study of the agricultural factor markets that support the farm economy of the southeastern United States aids the understanding of how farmers change the mix of factors as product and factor prices change. Factor demand elasticities were estimated for capital, land, labour, chemicals, energy and other intermediate inputs. On average; labour accounted for USD 0.410 of every USD 1 spent on agricultural inputs followed by other intermediate inputs, which accounted for USD 0.255. The demands for farm labour and other intermediate inputs were inelastic. The demand for farm chemicals was elastic, which indicates a lack of pricing power by companies that sell them. A substantial reduction in the use of farm chemicals could be achievable by increasing their price. Most of the factors are substitutes with the exceptions of capital and energy, and land and chemicals; which were found to be complements.

The paper uses an endogenous switching regression model to measure the impact of participation in micro-irrigation development on households’ welfare. The model takes into account selection bias associated with programme participation and endogeneity problems often encountered in most programme evaluations. A total of 482 households (195 irrigation users and 287 non-users) were used to generate all the necessary variables. To capture the impact of the irrigation on household welfare, two indicators were consideredv namely household farm income (Y) and household fixed asset formation (F) (evaluated at market Price during the survey period). The results show a positive and significant impact of irrigation use on the two outcome variables: income by 8.8 per cent and asset formation by 186 per cent as compared to non-users. This shows how important the micro-irrigation schemes are in improving the welfare of poor farmers in the research areas. Furthermore, the empirical results show that the probability of using one of the water sources (irrigation scheme) is associated with farm experience (age as proxy), farmer-to-farmer contact (the existence of an irrigation user neighbour), family size, the state of credit constraint, the number of visits by extension agents and the cost of irrigation development. As a robustness...

Feeding the world’s population in a sustainable manner is one of the key challenges facing the future of global agriculture. The recent removal of the milk quota regime in the European Union has prompted an expansionary phase in dairy farming, especially in Ireland. Achieving this expansion in a sustainable manner is crucial to the long-term survival and success of the Irish dairy sector. In this paper we examine the sustainability of Irish dairy farming, defining ‘sustainability’ as economically profitable, environmentally friendly and socially efficient. A typology of Irish dairy farms has been created using data on profitability, environmental efficiency and social integration derived from the Teagasc National Farm Survey. Economic, social and environmental performance indicators were determined and aggregated and then used in a multivariate analysis for the identification and classification of farm clusters. The purpose of this study to classify Irish dairy farms using performance indicators, thereby, assisting policy makers in identifying patterns in farm performance with a view to formulating more targeted policies. Two of the three clusters elicited from the analysis were similar in regards to their respective indicator scores. However, the remaining cluster was found to perform poorly in comparison. The results indicate a clear distinction...

Using Monte Carlo simulations, the impact of diff erent levels of risks on indemnification through an income stabilisation tool is investigated at the sector level. The presented approach, using the IACS database, allows analyses of diff erences across farms with respect to farm type and farm size, applying average-based approaches. Such preliminary information is useful for policy makers responsible for the design and introduction of measures to tackle income risk issues and to identify potential beneficiary groups among farmers. The analysis shows that on average 25 per cent of farms would be indemnified annually, the majority in fruit production, the dairy sector and hop production. Mixed farm types, with a share of 34 per cent, receive only 15 per cent of the total sum of indemnity. However, if EUR 12,000 of average income is set as the threshold for participation in such a tool, only 6 per cent of farms participate and only 13.3 per cent of them would be indemnified. Indemnity at farm level would range between EUR 82 and 40,870. Taking into account all farms in the sector, the average indemnity is EUR 918 per farm and almost EUR 13,500 for the second case.

Given the strong dependence of its economic results on natural factors, agriculture is characterised by high exposure to risk. This paper explores the relationship between the prevailing ‘model of agriculture’ in a country and methods of risk management (in particular, insurance schemes). The Czech Republic and Poland are post-socialist countries which are characterised by different models of agricultural development. While agriculture in the Czech Republic is oriented to industrial farming with large farms, Polish agriculture has a bipolar structure that includes both small, family-owned farms and large agricultural holdings. Various approaches to agricultural insurance schemes may arise from the contrasting models of agriculture, and substantial differences in both the demand and supply sides of the crop and livestock insurance markets indicate different policy approaches to the role of agriculture in the economies of the two countries. In both the Czech Republic and Poland, policy options for farm risk management should consider the balance between budget flexibility and the criterion of efficiency (from the perspective of insurers).