Rural development from policy to politics. National strategic plans and their potential impact on social structural transformations. Comparative overview. Case study Romania between the European and national context

The question of rural development is of utmost for countries such as Romania. In the current climate of tension generated by the post-pandemic recovery and geopolitical turmoil, rural development has been more important than ever. We are living in a time of great structural duress and the solutions are becoming more political as the effects of the policy are political ones. There is a transformation of the policy into politics as the Common Agricultural Policy and the Rural Development policy by any other name would still be politics. In this context, the flexibilization provided by the National Strategic Plan is more than welcome. The purpose of the paper is to analyse how the policy elements from CAP are turning into politics and are influencing the Member States politics. As the CAP post- 2020 unfolded new tools such as the National Strategic Plan were added to the EC toolbox, but often their design was influenced by national specificities. The paper performs a desk review analysis of the existing sources and has a case study the way in which this process unfolded in Romania. What is of importance in all that time-consuming process is the fact that for the first time we witnessed a large-scale reflection process throughout the European Union member states. It was partially favoured by the COVID-19 pandemic which put everything on hold for a couple of months. That combined with the need to reform made everything more democratic and more advanced and reformist than the initial proposals.

An Algorithm for Transport Optimization as the Effect of the European Green Deal and Climate Neutrality Goals

The exponential growth of the worldpopulation in the last decades (approx. eight billion people in 2022), corroborated with spectacular development of various sectors of activity such as transport, construction, information, and communication technology, etc. exert a worrying pressure on limited natural resources. Moreover, climate change, environmental degradation, increasing pollution, recent armed conflicts are increasingly real existential threats to the global population in general and to the old continent in particular. In this context, the European Green Deal (EGD) comes to counteract such unhealthy developments and proposes to transform Europe into a society with a modern, high performing and resource-efficient economy, with a goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. EGD involves a series of legislative measures that will support and implement policies on financial and competitive issues related to climate, energy, industry, sustainable and smart mobility, agriculture and biodiversity conservation and protection. From the EGD perspective, the objectives of this research have focused on the transport sector, with a view to ensuring safe, sustainable, green, and smart mobility. The main result of the research consists of the optimization algorithm developed and implemented by authors at one of the largest alliances transport, which calculates the best option for the delivery of goods, respecting the price lists and the proposed carbon dioxide emissions targets. At the same time, in the light of the results and conclusions of the research, the general implications regarding the financial and competitive aspects of the EGD are analysed, as well as the particular ones, specific to the alliance that is the object of the case study.

The Role of Common Agricultural Policy for Enhancing the Resilience of Rural Areas under the Current Global Challenges

Currently the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2023-2027 proposes a series of development objectives that allow Member States to design their CAP Strategic Plans for enhancing the resilience of rural areas through targeted actions to increase agricultural production and food security, while supporting climate and environmental objectives. This paper aims to identify the concrete ways in which funding granted through the CAP can contribute to increasing the resilience of rural areas under the global current challenges brought by the COVID-19 crisis and by the war that Russia started in Ukraine, by analysing some key factors: CAP's role for boosting the competitiveness of European agriculture, supporting the growth and employment in rural areas, supporting farm income, financing the environmental objectives and, last but not least, finding solutions to increase food security. For this purpose, the latest statistics on CAP allocations for the two pillars (Pillar I - agriculture and markets and Pillar II - rural development) will be presented, as well as the evolutions of trade in agricultural products and agricultural production at EU-27 level in order to highlight how can CAP respond to the challenges brought by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate change, while financing the sustainable development of EU's rural areas and supporting a competitive agriculture in the Member States.

CAP Direct Payments and Economic Resilience of Agriculture: Impact Assessment

This study presents an innovative approach to measuring the impact of EU CAP direct payments on the economic resilience of agriculture at a sectoral level. The construct of resilience is approached from the perspective of the resilience of the main functions of the sector. The overall level of direct payments impact on sectoral economic resilience is seen as a weighted sum of the payments’ impact on the resilience of the main economic functions of the sector. Such an approach, allowing for a comprehensive estimate of subsidy impact on the most essential areas of agriculture, is universal and can be adapted to measure economic resilience of other economic sectors. For the empirical application we used panel data from 27 EU countries over the period 2005–2019. The results revealed that the overall impact of direct payments on the economic resilience of agriculture across EU-27 was positive. However, the influence of the payments on different key functions of the sector diverged. The most evident and alarming negative changes in the economic resilience levels were observed in terms of efficiency of farms. Negative impact on separate indicators may pose a risk that the influence of direct payments on economic resilience of agriculture may not be sustainable in the longer run.

Bibliometric Analysis of Agri-Food Supply Chain and Short Agro-Food Chain

The paper presents a bibliometric analysis about the papers of the research papers written in the scientific field that use one of the two notions "food supply chain" (SCI) - agri-food supply chain and "short food supply chain" (SFSC), the notion of "local food systems" (LFS) will be found also. The database queried was the Web of Sciences platform containing journals, articles with scientific content from several publications. Web of Science information databases were then processed with VOSviewer software [3]. The results of research in Web of Science confirm the growing scientific interest in studying the subject of the "agri-food supply chain". Out of the total of 2702, 2622 records for SCI and 80 records for SFSC. The first article was published in 1995, then their number increased to 59 articles published in 2012 and 2013. In the next period, the interest for the scientific study of this subject increased from 254 in 2018, to 327 in 2019, and in 2020 the number of articles on the subject of SCI was 390, reaching 404 in 2021.

National Investment Framework for Revitalizing the R&D Collaborative Ecosystem of Sustainable Smart Agriculture

Demographic, economic, and environmental issues, including climate change events, aging population, growing urban-rural disparity, and the COVID-19 pandemic, contribute to vulnerabilities in agricultural production and food systems. South Korea has designated smart agriculture as a national strategic investment, expanding investment in research and development (R&D) to develop and commercialize convergence technologies, thus extending sustainable smart agriculture and strengthening global competitiveness. Hence, this study probes the status of smart agricultural R&D investment from the perspectives of public funds, research areas, technologies, regions, organizations, and stakeholders. It examines 5646 public R&D projects worth USD 1408.5 million on smart agriculture in 17 regions and eight technology clusters from 2015 to 2021. Further, it proposes a pool of potential collaborative networks via a case study of strawberry, a representative veritable crop inspiring smart agriculture, to demonstrate the study framework’s usefulness in promoting smart agriculture and establishing a sustainable R&D collaboration ecosystem. The proposed framework, accordingly, allows stakeholders to understand and monitor the status of R&D investment from various perspectives. Moreover, given the insight into the tasks belonging to technical areas and regions that require sustainable cooperation in smart agriculture, central and local governments develop policies to reinforce sustainable smart-farming models.

Shedding Light into the Need of Knowledge Sharing in H2020 Thematic Networks for the Agriculture and Forestry Innovation

Providing ready-for-practice materials in an easily accessible and user-friendly way is one of the challenges of Horizon 2020 Thematic Networks (TNs) to promote agriculture and forestry innovation. Those materials are the result of the co-creation and knowledge exchange among TN actors. Using a survey, we investigated the most efficient communication and dissemination (C&D) channels, types and formats of TN-produced data, as well as the involvement of TN actors. Additionally, we propose to collect TN outputs in a single digital platform, such that they are more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR), ensuring the TN’s impact. An open and interactive platform may allow us to overcome challenging issues such as language barriers, limited Internet access and differing cultural backgrounds. The results obtained from the survey suggest which content should be stored in such a digital knowledge reservoir for agriculture and forestry. For example, newsletters and visual materials are often preferred by farmers and foresters. Additionally, face-to-face interaction is confirmed to be the most preferred way of retrieving information, especially by researchers and farmers/foresters. Future work will further investigate the variations in needs of different user profiles. As such, the proposed platform can stimulate knowledge exchange among all TN actors.

Implementation Perspectives for the European Green Deal in Central and Eastern Europe

The present paper aims to identify the main factors that influence the capacity building for the Green Deal’s implementation in Member States from the central EU (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania) and the improvements that can be made in this regard. The research is empirical and explanatory, using qualitative strategy and the following methods: observation, a case study and a comparative method, for a period of ten years (2011–2020). The main findings of the research indicate four distinct categories of factors that could predict the capacity building for the Green Deal’s implementation: cultural, political, economic and social;as well as a differentiation of the Green Deal’s implementation in different stages at the EU level: industrialized Member States from the west and north, Member States from the south and north (Baltic states), and Member States from the central and south-east. The elaboration of national and regional plans for implementation and regional cooperation will provide suitable solutions, supported by the recovery and resilience funds. The research reveals that the prognosis for the Green Deal’s implementation in all of the investigated Member States is negative. The limitation of the research consists in its explanatory nature, which inhibits the ability to make definite conclusions.

Protected Areas and Rural Depopulation in Spain: A Multi-Stakeholder Perceptual Study

Protected areas (PAs) are thought by some to contribute to local wellbeing and socioeconomic development, whereas for others PAs remain a regulatory burden that hampers rural development. Here, we sought to ascertain the perceived causes of rural depopulation and the potential impact of four Natura 2000 sites on the wellbeing and depopulation figures of four protected rural municipalities in Spain that were selected as extreme case studies. We used phone surveys to elicit experts’ views (n = 19) on the topic and convened eight in-person workshops to garner local residents’ insights (n = 40) using structured questionnaires. We complemented perceived wellbeing data from PAs with surveys to residents in neighbouring unprotected municipalities (n = 28). Both experts and workshops’ attendees from protected municipalities overwhelmingly attributed depopulation figures to structural causes linked to transport accessibility, basic service provision and the existence of job opportunities, which they perceived to be unrelated to the PAs’ regulations or management. Local residents did generally not perceive any impact on their collective or individual wellbeing from those PAs, and most who did, expressed a negative impact chiefly due to socioeconomic restrictions. Four-fifths of the experts and half of the workshops’ attendees from protected municipalities, however, expressed that PAs’ administrations could help improve depopulation figures in their towns mainly through promoting tourism and greater compatibility of land uses, including housing and infrastructure development. While the assessed Natura 2000 sites certainly have scope for tourism promotion, their lenient legal regimes make it largely unfeasible to broaden land use compatibility without damaging protected features.

‘Farmers Don’t Retire’: Re-Evaluating How We Engage with and Understand the ‘Older’ Farmer’s Perspective

Globally, policy aimed at stimulating generational renewal in agriculture is reported to pay meagre regard to the mental health and wellbeing of an older farmer, overlooking their identity and social circles, which are inextricably intertwined with their occupation and farm. This paper, in probing this contentious issue, casts its net across what could be deemed as disparate literatures, namely connected to transferring the family farm and social gerontology, in order to determine what steps could be taken to reassure older farmers that their sense of purpose and legitimate social connectedness within the farming community will not be jeopardised upon handing over the farm business to the next generation. A number of practical ‘farmer-sensitive’ actions that can be taken at both policy and societal level are subsequently set forth in this paper to help ease the fear and anxiety associated with ‘stepping aside’ and retirement from farming amongst older farmers. A particular focus is placed on social and emotional wellbeing benefits of being a member of a social group reflecting farmer-relevant values and aspirations in later life. The potential of the multi-actor EIP-AGRI initiative and the long-established livestock mart sector in facilitating the successful rollout of a social organisation designed to fit the specific needs and interests of the older generation of the farming community is then outlined. In performing this, the paper begins a broad international conversation on the potential of transforming farming into an age-friendly sector of society, in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) age-friendly environments concept.

Promotion of European Wines in Third Countries within the Common Market Organisation Framework: The Case of France

The international wine market has undertaken important structural changes in the first decades of the 21st century, both in terms of demand and offer. In order to mitigate the effect deriving from the increase in competition, the European Union (EU) continues to allocate important resources to increase the competitiveness of the winemaking sector by means of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Common Market Organization (CMO). This paper aims to understand which factors have an influence on the correct implementation of the CMO measure of promotion in the principal wine exporter country: France. A fuzzy-set model (fs/QCA) has been utilized, studying a period of 10 years since 2009. Results show that is it possible to obtain a better execution ratio of measure of promotion by adapting some key factors, such as CMO budget allocation. These findings could support French national and regional authorities in the task of planning. Moreover, other Member States (MS) could also benefit, since in the new CAP approach, a higher participation in strategic plans is required for them by the EU.

Vegetable Trade Flows and Chain Competitiveness Linkage Analysis Based on Spatial Panel Econometric Modelling and Porter’s Diamond Model

The vegetable sector plays an important role in ensuring food security. Vegetable trade flows in Romania have become a major concern due to constant trade balance deficits despite the country’s agricultural potential. Taking into account the paradox between what could be considered an abundance of factor endowments and poor trade balance results, the objective of this research was to study the linkage between vegetable trade flows and chain competitiveness. Spatial panel econometric methods were used to study the impact of the international vegetable market on the demand in Romania, while the Balassa index and Porter’s diamond modelling techniques were used to study the competitiveness of the vegetable chain at both county and national levels. By applying the spatial regression method to the international trade and national production panel data, it was found that an increase in the quantity of vegetables imported into Romania would cause an even greater decrease in national vegetable production. The results show that Romanian vegetable production is highly and negatively influenced by the growing appetite for imports—therefore leading to a national dependence on the global vegetable chain. Porter’s diamond model results confirm that: (a) growing vegetables is profitable in Romania and the average profit margin is higher in this economic sector than in many others;(b) there is a lack of competitiveness caused by the post-communist excessively fragmented agrarian land structure and poor performance of the irrigation, warehousing, and transportation sectors;(c) the national production of vegetables is generally self-sufficient with the exception of three counties that resort to importing and account for more than 70% of Romania’s total vegetable imports;(d) factor endowments cannot be fully harnessed, and this contributes to the deepening of the trade balance deficits. Improvement is possible by fostering competitiveness through increasing the performance of supporting industries and the logistics infrastructure, as well as removing market access barriers for the many small farmers.

Pre-COVID-19 Organic Market in the European Union—Focus on the Czech, German, and Slovak Markets

This article compares attitudes to buying organic food in selected countries in Central Europe. The current research was conducted in 2019 on a total sample of 2800 respondents in the Czech Republic, Slovakia (Central Europe, with a relatively new organic food market), and Germany (a traditional Western Europe country with a mature food market). The study results demonstrate significant differences between the three selected markets. The product quality is the most important for German consumers. Slovak consumers consider organic food to be the least recognizable and least promoted of all the regions surveyed, and they are also the least likely to encounter targeted advertising for organic products. Germany is the country where most respondents regularly or occasionally buy organic food. In Slovakia, an interesting finding is the highest proportion of respondents who do not buy organic food at all. Czech respondents often buy organic products in specialized shops and like to grow organic products themselves. The results also suggest that Slovak consumers slightly more often prefer foreign organic products to the local ones, whereas consumers in Germany select regional organic products more often and prefer to buy regional products at farmers’ markets.

Bulgarian agriculture in the focus of representative statistical surveys

The aim of the article is to highlight certain trends in Bulgarian agriculture. The article is based on representative empirical information from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) and Farm structure survey (FSS). Changes in land use are registered with a significant impact on the development of land relations in our country. The results reveal processes of different nature and express the effect of the dominance of the Community agricultural policy on the economic conjuncture for the development of agriculture in our country. The dichotomy in the used agricultural area is an expression of increased competitiveness, which is inherent mainly in the production of extensive crops, with the presence of significant features for monoculture agriculture. At the same time, systemic problems in the intensive crops stand out, for the production of which Bulgaria possesses monopoly natural-climatic conditions. These results highlight the role of land relations and reveal/bring out potential opportunities for increasing the importance of agriculture in improving public relations and the socio-economic environment not only in the sector but also in the country as a whole. The Covid-19 challenge creates the preconditions for re-evaluating some existing stereotypes. The results of surveys over the last ten years reveal processes of consolidation of the utilized agricultural area and its concentration in a small number of large agricultural holdings. Extensive crop production is increasing. Intensive production, vegetables, fruit and livestock fall into the group of "vulnerable sectors". The number of small actors is decreasing;the processes of medium-sized ones are unstable. This creates difficulties in establishing sustainable family farms and is a potential risk of depopulation in some rural areas in Bulgaria. The registered processes are in dissonance with the goal setting of the Common agricultural policy (CAP). FADN 2020 reaffirms this trend, as the utilized agricultural area in Bulgarian agriculture continues to grow and monoculture production remains sustainable. The crisis with COVID-19 has revealed a number of problems in the supply of agricultural goods, which is an occasion to rethink the role of national policy to provide consumers with products of local origin and frames the need for cognition in the analysis of complex contemporary socio-economic processes.

Hedging Effectiveness of Commodity Futures Contracts to Minimize Price Risk: Empirical Evidence from the Italian Field Crop Sector

Over the last years, farmers have been increasingly exposed to income risk due to the volatility of the commodities prices. Among others, hedging in futures markets (i.e., financial markets) represents an available strategy for producers to cope with income risks at farm level. To better understand the advantages of such promising tools, this paper aims at analyzing the hedging effectiveness for soybean, corn and milling wheat producers in Italy. Following the literature, three different methodologies (i.e., naïve, OLS, GARCH) are applied for the estimation of the hedge portfolio, then compared to an unhedged portfolio for assessing the income risk reduction. Findings confirm the hedging effectiveness of futures contracts for all the considered commodities, showing also that this effect increases with longer hedge horizons, and also showing better performances for the European exchange market (i.e., Euronext), compared to the North American counterpart.