This paper incorporates interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics and suggests a holistic framework for assessing the forms and efficiency of environmental management in agriculture. First, it defines environmental management as a specific system of social order regulating behaviour and...

In this paper we incorporate the interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences), and suggest a framework for analyzing the mechanisms of governance of environmental sustainability. The...

This paper presents a multi-criteria mathematical model which is capable to facilitate the formation of smart cooperatives and to collect behavioural data about small farmers. The model for smart cooperation is based on Gross Margin calculation and a multifactor approach known as the Analytic...

The issue of adequate assessment of socio-economic and ecological sustainability of divers agricultural holdings is among most topical academic and practical problems. It is particularly important for smallholder farms accounting for the majority of all farms in the globe. In Bulgaria...

The specific system of governance in different countries, regions, subsectors, etc., eventually determines the speed and type of socio-economic development. Despite its big academic and practical importance, in Bulgaria and other countries in East Europe, there are very few empirical studies on...

Sustainable management not only constitutes the main challenge for agricultural systems, it is also becoming a driver of development in many regions of the world. As well as guaranteeing the production of food and other basic products, agriculture can foment social progress and economic growth...

Agricultural holdings have a very important role for the sustainable socio-economic development. Contemporary, the farms` activity is mainly determined by the market mechanism. Market imposes rules on agricultural holdings` functioning, on both the type and the scale of agricultural activities,...

Sustainable development has become a major topic not only for economic science but in economic policy development. There is substantial literature dedicated to analyzing the different aspects of sustainability - economic, social, and/or ecological. Agriculture has been recognized as one of the...

Fairtrade standards differentiate themselves from other sustainability standards such as Rainforest Alliance and UTZ by demanding that buyers pay to farmers at least a minimum price and a Fairtrade social premium - a sum that is paid to cooperatives in addition to the agreed price to be used in...

While many studies analyzed effects of sustainability standards - such as Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance - on smallholder farmers in developing countries, most did not sufficiently account for systematic differences between certified and non-certified farmers. Certified farmers are typically...