The phrase ‘rural areas’ mean not only the place for agricultural production and the living place of rural population, but also refer to all the traditions, landscape, environment and residents of these areas. Rural development is highly supported at the EU level and it helps to enhance the...

This is a draft paper, submitted in advance of presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.

Currently an industrial perspective dominates the EU policy framework for a European bio-economy. The Commission’s proposal on the bio-economy emphasises greater resource-efficiency, largely within an industrial perspective on global economic competitiveness, benefiting capital-intensive...

Rural development is of great significance for the future of both the EU and Hungary. We must reduce migration, create new jobs and focus on sustainability and the principles and goals of environmental protection and nature conservation. For this reason, it is necessary to apply for EU project...

The spatial configuration of land use can have a significant impact on both market and non-market outcomes. One type of land use configuration that has received considerable attention in recent decades - because of its impact on the efficiency of public service provisioning, on environmental...

The paper investigates spatial changes in cultivation and land use of wheat, maize and oilseed in Hungarian agriculture using different methods to measure these changes. The results suggest that spatial structure of crop productions has remained fairly stable during analysed period. The spatial...

This paper aims at analyzing business services in bioenergy investments and innovations on farms in the Northern Ostrobothnia region in Finland. Finance into research of bioenergy has strongly increased during the last years both in Finland and Europe. Primary focus of this research has been so...

Compared to urban regions, rural areas can be seen as historicaly marginal space. They, as a rule, leve behind in the process of participation in general developmental trends, mainly due to lack of local capital stock and personalities. Marginality, however, is a context dependet phenomenon and...

This contribution discusses assets and limits of the local/territorial level as a core level to improve the sustainability of agriculture. The focus is on the issue of rural landscape maintenance through farming. Some possible institutional solutions to overcome the difficulties of family farms...

The use of irrigation water for agricultural production requires innovative and sustainable research and an appropriate transfer of water saving technologies. The main aim of this paper is to explore the irrigating behaviour of farmers examining factors affecting their decision to adopt novel...