Eastern European Agriculture Research Articles

The theory of the investment development path and agriculture in Eastern Europe

The outdated investment development path results in Eastern Europe and the lack of focus on the agricultural sector necessitated this study. The generalised least squares estimator employed countries from 1993 to 2021 for agricultural sector data on 17 Eastern Europe. Eastern European agriculture is in the early phase of stage IV of the investment development path, consistent with the theory of the investment development path. Human capital enhanced net foreign direct investment. Agricultural trade openness, exchange rate, and inflation did not influence net foreign direct investment. Developed and transition countries in Eastern Europe were not distinguished regarding net foreign direct investment. Eastern European countries must increase agricultural growth relative to population growth. This would increase agricultural development. The increased income can be saved and channelled into domestic investments to spur additional growth. This would make capital available for export. The growth in human capital must be sustained to enhance technical know-how in agriculture that would accompany agricultural capital export. Agricultural sector managers of Eastern European countries must focus on enhancing the sector's supervisory and regulatory functions. The goal should be to reduce the costs of doing agricultural business through effective facilitation towards efficient agricultural markets.

Lead accumulation and distribution in maize seedlings: Relevance to biomass production and metal phytoextraction

ABSTRACTAmong trace metals, lead is a highly toxic contaminant, being hazardous to humans and animals. Application of maize plants for phytoremediation of polluted soils and waters has recently been of particular interest. The aim of this work is to investigate the Pb-phytoextraction potential of the maize cv. Tzariza used widely in Eastern European agriculture. Maize seedlings were exposed in a nutrient solution to 1–10000 µM of Pb2+ for 21 days. Lead accumulated mostly in conductive tissues and shoots at 0.1 mM and higher concentrations of Pb in growth medium. Pb at concentrations of 1 and 10 mM caused an increase in the superoxide anion level and the catalase activity in maize leaves. Lead ions were tolerable to maize seedlings within a concentration range up to 1000 µM of Pb2+. The levels of lead in the nutrient solution above 1 mM resulted in inhibition of the growth of axial organs, decrease in leaf area, inhibition of water absorption, and reduction in accumulation of biomass. Theoretical considerations indicate that in the temperate climates of the phytoremediation with maize may allow annual removal up to 90 kg of Pb per km2, depending on the initial level of soil contamination.

The Structural Transformation in Central and Eastern European Agriculture

The paper analyses the agricultural transformation in ten Central and Eastern European countries between 1990 and 2010. We provide evidence that despite of diversity of farm structure, heterogeneous preconditions in agricultural policy and economic policy reforms these countries follow the Lewis path of structural transformation. Our results indicate that beyond to macroeconomic conditions and inter-sectoral linkages, micro-level factors especially farm structure play important role in agricultural development.

Certification Schemes in the European Agri-Food Sector

In the last few years, following a number of food crises, quality assurance systems have been widely introduced into the European agri-food sector. Customers' growing quality demands and their undermined trust in food safety are just two of the driving forces behind this trend. With regard to quality assurance schemes, Central and Eastern European agriculture and food industries are in a catch-up position. To compensate for the lack of research in this field, this paper presents an overview of certification schemes in the European agriculture and food industry with a special emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe. It also discusses the characteristics and scope of the schemes as well as possible determinants and effects of the trend observed in recent years.

Central and Eastern European Agriculture and Environment: The Challenges of Governance at Multiple Levels

AbstractBuilding institutions of sustainability which are able to govern the many resource problems in Central and Eastern European agriculture and environment requires time and coordination. Time is needed to respond to the complexity and diversity of agri‐environmental resource problems and coordination is required to make the institutions work across different levels of decision‐making. The efforts for building such institutions took place within the field of tension between accession and evolution. Accession related institutional change took place within the time frame foreseen by politicians to meet accession criteria. Most local agri‐environmental problems, however, require more time for matching agri‐environmental conditions, with the interests, goals and skills of the different actors involved. Such problems of multiple governance have been successfully addressed in many Western European countries, which calls for an exchange of knowledge between Western and Eastern European resource managers. Partnership is recommended as a particularly useful concept during transition for solving many of the problems faced by the different actors and authorities involved in the challenge of sustainable resource management. This paper demonstrates the challenges of governance at different levels of decision‐making and identifies factors which hamper and promot this process

Risk and agricultural de-collectivisation, with evidence from the Czech Republic

The importance of family farms in Central and Eastern European agriculture during the transition has been more limited than was initially expected. In this paper a framework is developed in order to analyse the behaviour of family farms and corporate farms in the presence of risk, given the typical post-socialist environment. Management incentives, ownership structure, financial transfers and consumption-production linkages are shown to have the potential to limit the size of family farms relative to corporate farms. The hypotheses are tested with survey data from the Czech Republic. It appears plausible that risk limits the extent of structural change in transitional agriculture.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Agricultural Technologies and Tropical Deforestation Arild Angelsen, David Kaimowitz (Eds.) Agricultural Policies in Europe and the USA: Farmers Between Subsidies and the Market Antonio Piccinini, Margaret Loseby (Authors) Central and Eastern European Agriculture in an Expanding European Union S. Tangermann, M. Banse (Eds.) Beef in China: Agribusiness Opportunities and Challenges John W. Longworth, Colin G. Brown, and Scott A. Waldron (Eds.) International Trade in Agricultural Products Michael R. Reed

Consolidation initiatives after land reform: responses to multiple dimensions of land fragmentation in Eastern European agriculture

Consolidation initiatives after land reform: responses to multiple dimensions of land fragmentation in Eastern European agriculture

Patterns of Agrarian Transition

Karen MacoursUniversity of California, Berkeley, and Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenJohan F. M. SwinnenEuropean Commission and Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenI. IntroductionEconomic reforms have induced important output and productivity changesin the agricultural sectors of transition countries (TCs). There are, however,large differences between the countries in terms of the direction and themagnitude of these changes. For example, agricultural output increased con-siderably in the East Asian TCs, while there was a large output fall in theCentral and East European countries (CEECs) and the former Soviet Union(FSU) during transition (fig. 1).

Book review. Central and Eastern European Agriculture in an Expanding European Union. S Tangermann, M Banse [eds

Book review. Central and Eastern European Agriculture in an Expanding European Union. S Tangermann, M Banse [eds

Central and Eastern European Agriculture in an Expanding European Union. Edited by S. Tangermann and M. Banse. 2000

Central and Eastern European Agriculture in an Expanding European Union. Edited by S. Tangermann and M. Banse. 2000

Causes of Output Decline in Economic Transition: The Case of Central and Eastern European Agriculture

This paper analyzes how policy reforms and other factors have effected agricultural output in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989. Price liberalization and subsidy cuts caused a decline in relative prices for agriculture, contributing to almost half of the output decline. Transition uncertainty and severe drought each caused an average output fall of around 10%. Privatization, farm restructuring, and the associated disruptions affected output through input adjustments and production efficiency changes. Their impact differs between countries, as it is conditional on initial conditions and reform and liberalization in the rest of the economy.J. Comp. Econom., March 2000, 28(1), pp. 172–206. University of California, Berkeley, California 94720; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.

A decade of transition in central and eastern European agriculture

This paper briefly traces the main features of the transition process in the agricultural sectors of central and eastern European countries and the Russian Federation, and relates them to the challenges ahead. An overview of trends in agricultural production and consumption, trade and farm structures is followed by a discussion of producer support measures (producer subsidy equivalents, PSEs) for certain transition countries. Finally, future agricultural policy challenges are examined, in particular that of creating and maintaining competitive conditions for agriculture and in the economy as a whole. Many transition countries seek accession to the European Union, and are giving priority to policies in line with that goal. In general, the challenges ahead are converging with those of OECD countries. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.

Agricultural credit problems and policies during the transition to a market economy in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper assesses the problems of financing Central and Eastern European agriculture during the present transitionary period and the role of government in this process. Initially the paper looks at why credit markets work imperfectly, even in well developed market economies, focusing on problems related to asymmetric information, adverse selection, moral hazard, credit rationing, optimal debt instrument choice and initial wealth. It shows why these and related problems may cause transaction costs to be so high that credit rationing and high interest rates are rational and efficient responses by lenders to the imperfect information problems of the agricultural sector. A series of specific, transition-related issues are then discussed which have worsened these problems within the Central and Eastern European agricultural sector. The potential roles of governments in solving these issues and actual observed interventions by Central and Eastern Europe governments through credit subsidies, loan guarantees and specialised agricultural lending institutions are analysed. Finally, the paper discusses how financial market innovations have solved some of the credit market problems and derives the implications for government policies.

Computable policy model of eastern european agriculture and food industry

The development of an international trade during the last few years have shown, that there exist substantial impediments to the good trade performance of the East and Central European countries. These problems are both of an internal economic policy nature and of an international trade policy nature. Especially strong problems are in the area of the agricultural and food trade, which is much less liberalized than the trade in other goods. One of the many ways of helping to improve the situation in the agricultural trade is an extensive understanding of the effects of domestic and international policy measures on the export and import flows of goods and on the individual, group, and social welfare.

An East-West perspective on riverine loads of nutrients in the Vistula and Rhine basins

Measures proposed to reduce the load of nutrients to the Baltic Sea focus on the removal of point emissions through introduction of environmental technology in the eastern and southern parts of the drainage basin. This article draws attention to the mixed success of Western European river basin management by comparing water quality trends and turnover of nutrients in the Vistula and Rhine basins. Removal of point sources in the Rhine basin has caused a marked drop in the concentrations of phosphorus and ammonium nitrogen, whereas the long-term upward trend in the concentration of nitrate was broken only recently. As compared to the Vistula river, the Rhine is still in some respects more polluted. Expressed as area-specific export, the riverine load of nitrate from the Vistula basin is only about one sixth of that of the Rhine basin. The area-specific export of phosphorus is comparatively higher in the Vistula, but still only half of that of the Rhine. In addition to the lower input of nutrients in the Eastern European agriculture, the much lower runoff in the Vistula basin is an important explanation to the observed differences. Furthermore, in-stream processes, such as sedimentation of phosphorus, play an important role.

Some reflections on Eastern European agriculture an introductory essay to the special issue on “agriculture in Eastern Europe”

This article reviews three general themes pertaining to the transformation of Eastern European agriculture from a command system to a market oriented system. The first theme deals with the diverse character of Eastern European agriculture. In a context in which the agricultures of this region are often considered homogenous, acknowledgement of the varied dimension of this sector is a key element in both analytical and political terms. The second theme pertains to the “market”. The historical and theoretical dispute over the role of the “market” has not only been central in the socio-economic reorganization of Eastern European countries and agricultures but is also a common element shared with the “West.” The third and final theme refers to the changing social stratification of rural regions. The emergence of new and powerful social groups and the demise of others represent fundamental aspects in the understanding of possible trajectories for development. The article concludes with a review of the contributions contained in this special issue of Agriculture and Human Values.

Restructuring of Eastern European agriculture

Agricultural restructuring in Eastern Europe is a part of the restructuring of the economy as a whole. After democratic changes, Eastern European countries have fallen into a deep crisis. There are several reasons for this, including the large debt burden, decreased export opportunities, and monetary restrictions. The major reasons, however, are the lack of a clear economic policy at the governmental level and lack of confidence in the future of enterprises. In the industry and service sectors, ownership conditions are uncertain, and this hinders investing from both private investors and managers of state owned enterprises.