Recently increasing consumers’ demand towards quality and safety of food products as well as the desire for cultural identification have generated the demand for higher quality and higher status agricultural products, but have also created the market for value added products that carry a...

The cooperative sector is an indispensable and integral part of the global economy; includes cooperatives ranging from small-scale to multi-million dollar businesses in all sectors of the economy, count over 800 million members and provide 100 million jobs – which is 20 percent more than...

This paper consists of three parts. The first part outlines the characteristics of NGCs, defines their activities, and explains differences from traditional cooperatives. It also discusses advantages that NGCs have in promoting the development of local rural communities. The second part analyses...

In the last years European farmers have been facing two new phenomena: the asymmetric price transmission in agro-food sector and the decrease of agricultural value added. The European Commission denounced low transparency in trade relationships and frequent unfair commercial practices between...

This article highlights the interaction between social capital, pooling and quality premiums and their influence on cooperative members’ decisions regarding their product quality. A necessary condition for cooperative equitable principles such as complete pooling is that there exists a high...

In agro-food enterprises from Romania, management of risk control is seen as a dynamic process that, in order to work involves a cycle that incorporates risk identification, assessment, administering and verification. Risk management is closely related to the performance management, so that it...

Gravity model of trade has emerged as an important and popular model in explaining and predicting bilateral trade flows. While the theoretical justification is no longer in doubt, nonetheless, its empirical application has however generated several unresolved controversies in the literature....

With the Doha Round of negotiations having come to a standstill, more countries opt for preferential trade agreements with only a limited number of partners. Starting two recent negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the EU-US trade deal, might mark the beginning of a new era in...

Croatia joined the European Union (EU) on July 1st, 2013. This paper assesses the likely effects of this accession on the agricultural and food sectors, and analyses the impact on the EU, Croatia and their main trading partners. It considers both the harmonization of Croatia's trade instruments...

The raspberry is one of the most important export products of Serbia. According to FAO data about 80,000 tons of raspberry are exported annually from Serbia with a total value of 165 million USD (2011). That is why the Republic of Serbia is one of the major exporters of this product. Raspberries...