The multifunctional concept became one of the most important directions of EU agriculture development. The success of multifunctional agriculture is based on growing demand for non-commodity outputs. The endogenous values of rural areas that used to be explored mainly by agriculture are turning...

The 2007-13 EU rural development framework is expected to reinforce endogenous development forces in European mountainous zones, mainly in peripheral rural areas, by strengthening a number of measures of the 1999 Regulation. This paper attempts to examine the prospects of the second pillar's...

The strategy for rural development provides a differentiated approach to each type of rural areas. Particularly "sensitive " areas for rural development in Poland are remote rural areas, which are dominated by small farms with small economic strength. In many cases further agricultural...

Family farms have the most important role in agricultural production of Republic of Serbia. However, family farms are in very bad economic position and usually make low profits. That is why family farms have problems with financing of current assets as well as fixed assets. Because family farms...

Marginality is a complex phenomenon resulting from the specific natural, economic as well as socio-cultural attributes of individual regions. It includes impossibility (of majority) of the population living in a given territory to integrate itself into the main developmental trends (e. g. Moller...

This paper aims at analyzing business services in bioenergy investments and innovations on farms in the Northern Ostrobothnia region in Finland. Finance into research of bioenergy has strongly increased during the last years both in Finland and Europe. Primary focus of this research has been so...

This paper discusses the challenges that the next EU programming period has given to rural policy. In the case of Finland the most important level of implementing regional and rural policies so far has been provinces (NUTS 3) but in 2007—2013 both the EU Commission and our national rural...

Core objectives for rural development support for the programming period 2007-2013 are: (1) improving the competitiveness of agriculture and forestry, (2) improving the environment and the countryside, and (3) improving the quality of life in rural areas and encouraging diversification of...

Slovakia is the country with unusually appropriate conditions for development of tourism. Therefore the governmental programmes with economic development of rural area as one of their priorities emphasise diversification of economic activities including creation of new work opportunities in the...

The background, criteria and scope of the spatial definition of LFA are very similar in both countries. Farm eligibility criteria are entirely different. In Slovakia the whole agricultural area of a holding is eligible for payment. In the Czech Republic it is only the area of grassland. Only the...