European consumers have become increasingly more aware of food safety issues, as a consequence of a number of food ‘scandals’. Most of these ‘scandals’ have been related to livestock products. However, most consumers still believe that it is possible to produce ‘safe’ food at low prices, while a small group...

All stakeholders in the organic livestock food chain have different priorities with respect to food quality. Stakeholders include producers, wholesalers, retailers, advisory bodies, certification groups, regulatory and inspection groups (such as environmental health officers & food microbiologists) and the consumer. Due to the wide range in requirements by these different...

Economic reforms launched in the early 1990s have significantly affected Czech agriculture for more than a decade. First was the reform of property rights to land, which was considered an underlying condition for the effective functioning of a market economy. The reform was built upon three principals: restitution of land...

Over 1 million people became landowners during the mass privatization and reorganization of collective farms in Moldova. More than 200,000 peasant farms, second one – “Survey of farm managers”, were conducted by at import owing 1.8 ha of land each, and became the most typical economic entities farming this land....

Russian dairy enterprises underwent dramatic changes during 1990-2001. Not much is known about the position of these enterprises under the new conditions. This study examined a sample group of dairy enterprises in the Moscow region to try to identify similarities and divergences in historical background, performance, managerial and structural characteristics....

Building on existing models for the role of agriculture in industrialized and developing countries, this chapter examines a number of critical aspects of agriculture’s role in Central and Eastern European (CEE) rural development. By reviewing the contributions of this proceedings volume, we focus on the perspectives of small farms, rural...

This paper discusses the trickle-down effects of productivity growth in Agriculture and trade-offs between agricultural aggregate productivity growth and rural poverty alleviation. Empirically, we attempt to establish the link between agricultural productivity growth and the distribution of incomes in rural areas, the price for grains – a major agricultural commodity,...

The paper develops a new perspective in social capital theory by outlining the significance of social capital for organizational development and change. Different mechanisms of economic coordination such as markets, hierarchies and teams have been shown to exhibit various and consistent social capital-dependence. Accordingly, insufficient amount of social capital is...

The paper discusses the impact of industrialized countries' agricultural policy on the development of rural areas, with special reference to the CAP. Against the background of the principles of rural development policy it analyses effects on employment and environmental objectives in rural areas. The impact of agricultural market policies is...

Russian rural areas (populated areas outside towns and cities) occupy two thirds of the country territory. Practically all Russian constituent regions have rural areas, though varying by their share in a region’s total area and by their population number. In the Southern and European Russia and Siberia the former reaches...

This paper aim is to examine various assumptions referring to the increase of subsistence farming in Slovakia during the transformation period. Based on statistical data from small landholdings and individual, non-registered farms in various regions of the country (districts with high and low unemployment, eastern and northern versus western and...

The objective of the paper is to analyse the evolution and strategies of Albanian farms in order to understand the process of adapting to the market economy, to outline the role of agriculture in the country's socio-economic development and to identify future strategies of public policies in rural areas. The...

Georgia is one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet bloc. Over half of its 4.7 million people live below the poverty line, second only to Romania among central and eastern European countries. The purpose of this paper is to describe the grassroots reality of the country’s agricultural sector...

Development is broadly viewed as a process of widening substantive human freedoms or capabilities. In accordance with the concept laid out in the “Development as Freedom,” by SEN (1999), the widening of choice, i.e., the larger number of effective, available alternatives that lead to an ever-greater ability to live a...

For Poland, the last decade of the 20th century was a time of intensive social, political and economic change. Poland was confronted with the necessity of quick but deep changes in the economy, as well as in state administration and the functioning of newly-established self-government structures. As a result of...

During the past decade and a half considerable effort has been put into agricultural restructuring in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that are undergoing transition to a market economy. The last decade has also coincided with considerable increase in inequality in all transition economies. The fall in...

Subsistence agriculture is closely linked to a low level of economic development. We find it both in today's less developed countries and in the early stages of industrialised countries. Typically, subsistence agriculture is characterized by a low-external input level and low productivity (per land and/or per labour). In these situations...

Survey results indicate that on the whole, individual farms in transition countries are far from pure subsistence operations. The majority of farms categorized as individual – household plots and independent peasant farms – sell at least some of their output. The proportion of output sold by these farms is quite...

The transformation of the political and economic systems in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) was driven by the desire to combine political freedom with improved living conditions. Market-oriented reform is the essence of transformation for the former socialist planned economies. However, considerable segments of Eastern European and...

Bulgaria began the transformation of its agricultural sector early in the reform process. The chosen path of land reform was radical and aimed at restoring the status quo enjoyed half a century ago. The outcome of this slow and complicated process was a very fragmented structure of land ownership and...