The rural areas in Bulgaria cover more then 80% of the country territory and account for about 29% of the population. Their development depends strongly on agricultural sector. The paper examines structural changes in agriculture, labour market situation in rural areas and presents the main...

In the last hundred years, great changes have taken place in the farming systems all over the world. They were economically driven and beneficial but they also lead to a range of negative side effects. At the same time consumer awareness regarding food quality and safety grew, together with...

The market of organic products in Bulgaria enlarged significantly in the last few years. Although the share of organic food products in general food market in the country is relatively small-less than 5 %, the total area under organic products in Bulgaria/cultivated and wild collected/ is more...

Organic and low-input farming practices are considered keystones for the conservation of biodiversity in semi-natural systems. Accordingly, attention to the assessment of the benefits stemming from these activities is increasing in order to provide a solid base for the adoption of...

Agricultural landscape is a complex system composed by interrelated ecological, economic and social sub-systems. Disentangling interactions and mechanisms in such a context is, therefore, difficult and involves knowledge and methodologies developed in different scientific fields. In this paper...

A comprehensive quantification of biodiversity in farming systems would require a very significant amount of work (and funds) even for a small area. Therefore, biodiversity indicators are needed to solve the problem of the measurement feasibility. Even though the issue of cost and effectiveness...