Tag: policy

In 2015, all 193 UN member countries agreed to halve global food losses and waste by the year 2030. In this article, we are going to explore why the first official study on food loss and waste (FLW) by Gustavsson et al. FAO, 2011 cannot be used as a reasonable basis for policymaking – even though it underlies Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3. Then we will look at the new proposal by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which aims to harmonise the methodology for FLW research employing the Food Loss Index (FLI). In particular, we are going to assess the suitability of the FLI as a tool for policymaking. We would like to highlight that although both papers have played an important role in raising awareness about the global problem of FLW and in encouraging further research, they do not solve such important issues as providing a unified definition of FLW, the aggregation of heterogeneous commodities within a single category, and the absence of a methodology and data, both of which are certainly needed for policymaking. The objective of the article is to start a discussion about those issues, as even the recent flagship FAO ...

We investigated the extent to which the Local Development Strategy (LDS) activities planned at the beginning of the European Union’s Leader programme implementation period, and the associated budget allocation in response to the defined local needs, were confirmed at the end of the period. We used as examples the implementation of two LDSs, one by a Local Action Group (LAG) in Poland and one in Italy. We applied some simple indicators to assess how much the budget assumptions at the planning level were reflected in the successful implementation of projects, and conducted interviews with representatives of the two LAGs. We showed that the two LAGs were generally working effectively but that excessive institutionalisation could be the major constraint to the proper design of the LDS and thus the implementation of the Leader programme. For the Polish LAG, it was because of the transfer of the evaluating role outside of the LAG: assessment of applications was undertaken by the regional institution, the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture. In the case of the Italian LAG, the reason was an excessive formalisation of the rules concerning project applications.

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 ...

The article presents the results from a modelling exercise on five crops: wheat, barley, maize, sunflower and rapeseed. These crops cover 55 per cent of the utilised agricultural land in Bulgaria and over 90 per cent of the arable land. The main goal of the research was to project the development of the production and trade of these crops in Bulgaria between 2013 and 2017, as well as to implement an analysis of certain scenarios related chiefly to upcoming changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The model is linked with the global crop market through European Union prices, as the Bulgarian commodity market is considered to be a price taker, and it assumes the development of other agricultural sectors (livestock) and the macroeconomic situation in Bulgaria as exogenous variables. The research is an attempt to incorporate into Bulgarian analytical practice modelling methods that can provide useful figures and projections about the impacts of different political measures for decision makers, and market information on the prices and global supply and demand trends for farmers and agri-business organisations. The results show that the production of the modelled commodities will continue to increase in the coming years, mainly as a result of ...