The increasing and often conflicting challenges that agricultural production systems face today require a more comprehensive approach to planning in the sector, integrating the economic principles of production with its social characteristics and ecological impacts. The paper presents an innovative attempt to incorporate biophysical criteria into a standard socio-economic optimisation model, illustrated through a study of the Slovenian dairy sector. The biophysical perspective on the system's functioning is determined by means of emergy analysis. This is an environmental accounting approach which reflects the cumulative environmental support needed to produce a certain output. The eco-centric perspective on the emergy approach complements the standard socioeconomic perspective of value that reflects the utility of a product (anthropocentric perspective). The results show that a protectionist or eco-social focus of public interventions results in the sector's organisation with rather contrasting performance characteristics. The model outcome that represents a compromise between the two agro-political paradigms clearly suggests that incorporation of the emergy criterion into the optimisation model leads to a diverse and balanced structure and a more favourable economic and biophysical performance of the sector. Accordingly, the results confirm the complementarity of economic and emergy approaches and provide implications for a more comprehensive planning of agricultural activity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4066952
In this article, we apply discourse analysis to the European Commission's Communications on reforms of the European Union's Common agricultural policy (CAP). The results of the historical discourse analysis of the European Commission’s strategy documents in the form of Communications on the CAP from 1991 to 2017 showed that the discourse was a hybrid, modified according to the specific political economic context and the European Commission’s need to justify the CAP reforms. In the first two Communications of 1991 and 1997, the neomercantilist and neoliberal discourses dominated to justify the reduction of market price support. In the Communications of the 2000s the neoliberal and multifunctionality discourse dominated to justify further CAP reforms based on decoupling and liberalisation of support. In the last Communication from 2017 the multifunctionality discourse in populist form prevailed to find the new societal argumentation for maintaining the policy.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4362888
This paper explores ethno-villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina as an important element of rural and cultural tourism. The attractiveness of natural and cultural heritage is very important for sustainable rural tourism development. In order to improve the process of decision making to enable the sustainable development of ethno-villages, a multi-criteria assessment model has been developed. The methodology is based on qualitative modeling using a multi-criteria analysis via the DEXi software. The model is based on hierarchical relations consisting of three main criteria that are the basis of sustainable tourism development: economic, social, and environmental criteria. The ultimate goal of the model in this study was to evaluate ethno-villages, namely six ethno-villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results of the study show how ethno-villages contribute to sustainable development.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4660780
In the European Union (EU), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is considered to be the critical public policy in terms of both impacts and funds dedicated to nature conservation, yet the goal of halting biodiversity loss in the EU remains elusive. The present paper examines the degree of biodiversity policy integration into the CAP and the quality of policy programming in a selected EU Member State in the 2014–2020 period. We use a heuristic model combining an assessment of biodiversity policy integration and a program theory analysis of the policy’s logic model. In addition, the elaboration of the logic model for other agricultural policy objectives, relevance and potential effects of measures and allocation of budgetary funds are evaluated for comparative purposes. The program logic model was found to be only loosely defined for most objectives of Slovenian agricultural policy. At the strategic level, the integration of biodiversity policy is limited to instruments that remunerate above-standard farming practices, investments and payments to areas with natural constraints. In contrast, the inclusion and consistency of biodiversity conservation in instruments supporting standard practices (e.g. direct payment schemes) is addressed only to a limited extent. Given their design and implementation, fewer than 10 % of relevant measures were judged to have strong or significant potential effects and will thus probably only partly meet the policy objectives. Finally, biodiversity conservation (estimated 5% of the total agricultural policy budget), as well as other environmental objectives (22–23 %), have a significantly lower priority than income- and production-related objectives (54–60 %). The future CAP should include adequate safeguards and incentives to improve the quality of programming and integration of biodiversity policy, particularly since an increasing emphasis is given to decision-making at the national level. However, although the post-2020 CAP programming system could, in principle, be seen as a step forward, there remains a high risk of underperformance in the field of biodiversity conservation in the EU Member States.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4363400
The paper present a multi-criteria decision DEXi model for assessment of less favoured areas (LFAs). The tool enables easier assessment of farming in different areas of Slovene LFAs with respect to criteria of sustainability. Analysis of LFAs and final integration of the assessment of LFAs depend upon various criteria. In this paper we analyze individual LFAs and farming systems in these areas at the state level with respect to criteria of sustainability and farming potential.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4359724