Regional employment and population change have displayed considerable spatial disparities within Northern Ireland in recent years. It is important to gain a better understanding of the causes of these spatial disparities to facilitate the development of effective policies to promote economic...

Agricultural landscapes are important elements of European culture. There is an increasing recognition that agricultural landscapes represent economic assets; not only because of the production of agricultural commodities, but also by offering significant opportunities for the socioeconomic...

Developing the capacity to assess and chart trends in the sustainability of farming and food production is becoming increasingly more important as agriculture strives to produce more food while minimising the risk to the natural environment. The multi-faceted nature of sustainability is...

Value creation is the result of the continuous innovation activity of the entrepreneur, which is carried out mainly in form of open innovation among the agri-food SMEs. However value creation is not the ultimate goal of the enterprises. They are more interested in increased appropriation of the...

The provision of commodities for feed, food and energy production is the main task of the agricultural sector but it is obvious that agriculture is also essential for the viability of most rural areas. Although the consequences of agriculture on the landscape are extensively described, the...

A series of studies have explored the future intentions of farm households to reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This paper explores the intentions of Scottish livestock farmers under proposed reforms and, using the path dependency model, estimates the effect of past decisions on...

The paper investigates the effect of variations in soil type, rainfall, N fertilizer amount and crop prices on the objectives of arable farms operating in Nitrogen Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) and receiving the Single Farm Payment (SFP). Sensitivity analysis was carried out using a mixed-integer...

One of the key features of the CAP 2014 reforms is the requirement for Member States currently distributing direct payments to farmers on the basis of historic support levels to switch an area-based payment scheme. This paper explores effects of this shift for both the farm sector and the wider...

This paper estimates returns to education for a sample of farm operators in Northern Ireland. The analysis examines the relationship between education and on-farm and off-farm labour incomes. Human capital earnings functions are estimated to identify the marginal return to education measured as...

In this paper we present results from a Choice Experiment (CE) incorporating respondent debrie…ng ranking information about attribute importance employing a modi…ed Mixed Logit using Bayesian methods. Our results indicate that a CE debrie…ng question that asks respondents to rank the...