The increasing concern over climate change has led to a number of international agreements to control greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture currently accounts for 28 percent of Ireland’s total greenhouse gas emission and therefore has a major role to play in Ireland achieving its emissions...

This paper conducts a detailed, micro-focused investigation on the implications of recent agricultural policy changes on the structure of production systems in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands in terms of farm numbers, system switching, specialisation, the role of economies of scale, on-farm...

This paper examines intergenerational succession on Irish dairy farms. The factors that influence the decision to enter dairying farming are examined using a binary choice logit model. Reasons that are frequently published in the popular farming press as being an obstacle to intergenerational...

Using Ireland as a case study, the overall aim of this paper is to determine if decoupled payments affect farmers’ behaviour. Using a dynamic, multi product, partial equilibrium model of the EU agricultural sector, this paper first compares levels of production that would be expected if...

The future of dairy farming in Ireland is examined. The effects of a strong macroeconomy, Agenda 2000 and domestic policy on milk quota transfer are analysed using linear programming and Markov Chain analysis. Results show that all farms are subjected to a price-cost squeeze. Smaller dairy farms...

This paper examines the effect of the decoupling of farm direct payments upon the off-farm labour supply decisions of farmers in both Ireland and Italy. We use panel data from the Farm Business Survey (REA) and FADN database covering the period from 2002 to 2009 to model these decisions. Drawing...

The adoption and possible abandonment of organic farming has yet received little attention in the literature. As time plays an important role in explaining farming decisions, a dynamic econometric framework, namely duration analysis, is used. The probability of entry to and exit of the organic...

The European dairy industry faces an increasingly uncertain world. There is uncertainty about, for example, subsidy payment levels and compliance conditions, global competition, price variability, consumer demand, carbon footprints, water quality, animal welfare, food safety, and the...

Policy for agricultural extension services (AES) has been revitalized during the last phases of rural development policies (2007/2013), to empower human capital in agriculture. A wider package of measures aiming at improving the supply of extension at farm level is foreseen and financial...