The organic sector in Germany has experienced a substantial growth since the beginning of the 1990s until today. During this process of expansion, most organic farms have grown in terms of factor endowment, while others have disappeared or reconverted to conventional agriculture. This paper...

We analyse weekly calf prices from 2003 to 2009 to assess the impact of two important events which changed the structure of European cattle markets. We find the four European calf markets studied to be integrated. The decoupling of farm payments in the framework of the 2003 reforms of the Common...

In comparison to flatland agriculture mountainous agriculture is often shaped by small plot sizes, unfavourable climatic conditions and steep slopes. All those conditions make it extraordinarily expensive to implement new technologies and to modernise farms. Consequently our research hypothesis...

With the change of the political regime in Central and Eastern Europe, both managers of corporate farms and newly established private farmers had to adjust to the rules of the market economy. Among both groups, some are economically more successful than others. In general, a varying adoption of...

In this paper we analyze the factors that influence the productivity of maize among smallholder farmers. We use farm-household survey data in order to compare the productivity of smallholder maize production under integrated (ISFM) and chemical-based soil fertility management using a normalized...

Die Internationalisierung der Märkte stellt auch die Unternehmen des Agribusiness vor große Herausforderungen. Am Beispiel von 21 führenden europäischen Genossenschaften der Mol-kerei- und Fleischwirtschaft wird daher in dem Beitrag der Zusammenhang zwischen Interna-tionalisierungsgrad und...

For European operators of biofuels plants there are not many hedge vehicles available to hedge operational margins. Cross hedges for rapeoil (with the rapeseed futures contract) and RME (with the NYMEX diesel futures contract) could be useful instruments. We use recent developments on threshold...