The TOP-MARD project is a 3-year, 11 country, project supported by the EU’s Framework 6 Programme for Research and Technology Development1. The aim of the research project was to build a policy model of multifunctional agriculture and rural development which would link the multiple functions...

One of the critical success factors for the future development of the agri-food sector is the increased integration of enterprises and other stakeholders in horizontal and vertical ‘communities’. Tracking and tracing, agreements on quality policy, improvements in logistics, dissemination of...

We analyse the impacts of the CAP reforms on the technical efficiency of the crop farms. We use an output distance function and an inefficiency effects model which incorporates the influences of exogenous variables on farm efficiency. We formulate policy variables (e.g. the CAP subsidies) and...

While farmers have been recognised as one of the key sources of innovation, many studies on agricultural innovations continue to consider farmers as adopters of externally-driven innovations only. Based on cross-sectional data from 409 farm households, this study, in contrast, analyses the...

This study was an analysis of the input of human labour, tractive force and energy consumption in the model technologies of production of winter wheat, winter triticale, winter rye and sugar beets grown for bioethanol as well as reed canary grass, Virginia mallow, sorgo and maize grown for...

The goal of the TOPMARD project is to develop a model of agriculture and rural development to better understand the agronomic, ecological, economic and social dimensions of rural regions. The resulting model, (Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development) was built...

Successive CAP reforms have increased the exposure of European agriculture to market forces. As a result, farmers have become preoccupied with their competitiveness and have progressively adopted best practices. However, these long-run technological adjustments could be slowed down by eventual...

Rice-prawn gher (RPG) farming system is an indigenous agricultural technology solely developed by farmers since mid 1980s. The present study aims to estimate the land productivity of modern varieties (MV) paddy production under RPG and (year-round modern varieties) YRMV paddy farming systems in...

Standard deterministic analysis of agricultural and biofuel policies can yield incomplete or misleading results. Stochastic analysis is especially important when policies have asymmetric effects and when there is intrinsic interest in uncommon events or the distribution of possible outcomes. The...