In order to stimulate organic farming governments generally use a mix of temporary hectare payments and provision of public services for stimulating the development of the organic sector. In this paper a conceptual model is developed for determining a socially optimal hectare payment for any...

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 objective of this paper is to study the effect of agricultural policies on marketing decisions as well as the link between marketing and production decisions. We develop an analytical model to study how policies affect marketing decisions and conditions under which the two types of decisions...

Modern animal production has been criticised for the lack of animal-friendly production practices. The goal of this paper is to examine how animal welfare could be improved in pig fattening by providing producers with extra incentives. The focus is on three preventive and one mitigative...

Irrigation water use by agriculture has been identified as one of the major sustainable water management issues in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). This paper aims at developing a simulation framework to jointly assess agricultural and water issues. While the strong...

Grasslands received policy attention in the Czech Republic only just fifteen years ago, when they were threatened to be abandoned in the economic transition process. The supports to farming on grasslands have grown gradually, particularly after the EU accession. The policy followed the notion of...

The dairy sector is an important component of rural economies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), providing vital employment and income, in an environment of weak social security and scarce job opportunities. Dairy farming in the CIS encompasses a wide diversity of farms: from 1 and...