The paper is focused on the direct payments employment in agricultural policy and potentialities for this shape of financial transfers to the recipient’s income to affect farmer’s production decision making.

This research was conducted in the years 2001–2005 with the main goal to estimate the importance of personal sales, additional promotion and public relations as elements of seed companies’ promotion in the Polish market. The personal sales used in marketing activities in seed companies had two forms: passive and active. It was used only in contact with professional gardeners. The additional sale promotion included many tools, often used at the same time. In the case of the amateur gardeners, the most common sale promotion tool was an increase in seed weight in small seed bags while keeping the same price. For the professional gardeners, the most important sale promotion tool was a field day meeting organized by seed companies, especially the foreign ones, as well as participation in fairs and branch exhibitions. The sale promotion tools for seed wholesalers included mainly discounts based on the selling results of the former year. The seed companies also paid attention to public relations by using various activities.

In The European Union the viable Producer Organizations (POs) are the key instruments of the regulation of the fruit and vegetable sector. In spite of the same EU standards the operation of the POs shows diversity in the Member States. These concern mainly the number of membership, turnover and company form. In the EU-15 the progress of the POs has started more decades ago therefore the new Member States included Hungary has handicap. At present the regulation of the sector is under revision and the new standards will be in force from 2008. As a result of the amending the European Union expects the increase of the number of the POs in order to boost the bargain position of the farmers against retailers as well as the use of environmental friendly cultivation technologies. In this paper I present the main goals of the regulation and its reform, furthermore I examine the features of the POs in the European Union and in Hungary. Besides I examine how we could strengthen the role and the bargain position of the POs. One of the solutions could be the forming of the secondary collaborations.

The European Union faces its greatest challenge ok its history at the beginning of the 21st century. Because of the englarment process of new member countries several problems were raised, one of them was the most important, which was the free movement of people. Before the Eastern-Central European countries’ englarment, many member countries feared multitudinous migration wave, which lays the Western-Europe and the Eastern-Central-European employees are taking away work of other people. It followed that the member countries of the European Union restricted their labour market that stay clear of prospective multitudinous immigration. At the same time the Eastern-Central -European countries were given the unprecedented chance to introduce reverse limitations on the workforce migrating from EU-15 members by previous englarment’s experience. The present paper is looking for the following questions: why the European Union was concerned about the free movement of people; how the number of the Eastern-Central- -European citizens changed; how the number of foreign citizens in Hungary changed. The lessons were learnt from previous enlargements as well as workforce data and migration within the EU.

The accession of the Czech Republic to the EU is linked with conditions of Common Agriculture Policy and with the system of direct payments. Progressive form of direct payments was set for new member states for time period 2004–2007. These direct payments are as high as 25–30% – 35–40% of the amount of direct payments in EU-15 and afterwards 10% annual rise with the possibility to increase the payments by additional 30% from the national budgets in every year, however maximally up to 100% of the rates in EU-15. Impacts of direct payments for economics of agrarian enterprises are given by the level of direct payment per hectare of arable land, possibly per livestock unit, or as the case might be according to the number of beef cows, sheep or goats. This mentioned impact is also reflected in financial situation of Czech enterprises after the accession to the EU. The paper deals with the impact of direct payments on particular case of agrarian enterprise farming in the Czech Republic in the comparison with enterprise farming in comparable conditions in Austria, namely in “Niederösterreich” region.

The SOR analysis is a tool which allowing the regional actors and decision makers to establish effective tourism policy [McDonald 1992; Haberberg and Rieple 2001]. The policy which is the main field of interest in the COTOUR project is concentrated on the Regional Product treated as a tool of the region development. First step of the SOR analysis is SWOT analysis. The next step for SOR analysis purpose is the choice of elements described in SWOT analysis features these which are crucial for the research purposes. In case of COTOUR project we needed to choose these ones which had influence on tourism development from the regional product point of view. The paper reports part of research related to the EU INTERREG IIIC COTOUR project (www.cotour.org).

The most signifi cant problems of agricultural enterprises are the lack of equipment and assets, financing production and development as well as the low level of income achieved through agricultural activity. Subsidies from the government, favourable credit constructions and the European Union resources play a particularly important role in improving the farmers’ financial status and in implementing investments and fi nancing operating funds. During the last five years several national and from May 2004 the European Union subsidies or low-premium credit constructions could be applied for by farmers. In this study based of the National Country Development and Planning Information System the intensity of utilizing the European Union subsidies was examined in the South Plain region in Békés county, focused on the Agricultural and Rural Development Operative Programme.

The paper deals with two currently much discussed issues: living standard and life quality, which both refer to the social welfare of inhabitants in certain time and space conditionings. The problem is to find the determinants of these two phenomena, as well as to reveal the character of living standard and life quality. The author shows examples of a arithmetical presentation of the potential evaluation of living standard with the use of GDP and HDI measures. In case of life quality the issue of imponderables and the chance for their qualitative estimation has also been pointed out.

Excluding the market mechanism allows the state for allocating public funds to finance educational tasks. Responsible for the quality of educational services offered are mainly the units of local self-government that are assigned funds to realize this aim within the frames of the educational part of general subvention. However, the basic indicator of decentralization of competencies is the principle of adequacy of financial means and the tasks assigned. The aim of the paper is to highlight the defects in the construction of the educational part of the general subvention that make it virtually impossible to prove the realization of the principle of the adequacy of means to the tasks assigned.

This paper presents the history and principles of EUREPGAP certifi cation. The system is evaluated on the basis of research conducted among three big producers of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers in the Lublin Province. EUREPGAP consists of voluntary standards for the certifi cation of such agricultural products as fresh fruit and vegetables, cut fl owers, green coffee, meat, fi sh and seafood. The certifi cate is required by all main international chains of supermarkets. Certifying food safety management system in horticultural holdings is quite advantagous to them. It is shown by presenting opinions of investigated producers about costs and benefi ts of EUREPGAP. The interviewed farmers have also given the reasons for implementing the system and described the diffi culties that have appeared whilst certifying and maintaining EUREPGAP.

The organic farming is an important part of agrarian policy of the Czech Ministry of Agriculture. It is perspective way of farming with new market with organic products (it is same expression as bio products). The organic agriculture develops new labor opportunities and country-side as well as it saves an environment. Development of organic farming offers chances for the Czech organic products on the European market. There is demand rising. Since the Czech Republic is a member of the EU the export divides into export to the EU and out of the EU more and more. The Czech market is not as developed and as well supplied with wide range of products as those in western countries, but its recent development shows it is changing and improving.

Causal analysis facilitates to determine the cause-and-effects relations between economic phenomena in order to understand the changes and prepare decisions’ fundaments about the future. In the cause analysis financial results can be calculated as the result of a multiplication of two, three or four factors. In this paper a four factors model was applied. This approach looks into the causes which influence on the level of net profits as: changes in the level of employment, changes in the equipment per employee and other quality factors as assets’ productivity and sales profitability. In order to determine the influence of particular factors on the result of the analyzed phenomenon the method of logarithm finding was applied. This method provides relatively exact results. The analysis contains selected enterprises of the food sector. Based on the results managing efficiency was evaluated for analyzed enterprises. These results could be useful in the future to improve the decision making process from an economic point of view and compare levels of resources efficiency utilization of enterprises of a similar production profile.

The goal of the present study was estimation of the scale of straw production in Poland and, particularly, in Lublin region, in order to assess a straw balance and determine its amount possible to assign for energetic purposes. Conducted was a comparative analysis of costs of energy production from straw and other carriers. Identified were opinions of users of straw-fed boiler houses compared to the opinions of users of traditional fuels.

The social need for the decrease in the chemical use of the agriculture and its environmental impacts is growing. The decreased level of chemical use can be resulted by several means from the reduced number and quantity of treatments, the organic production, the sustainable production by integrated chemical plant protection methods to the precision production techniques. The use of these methods will change the whole operation and production system of the farms. With the help of model calculation, the present paper examines the viable size of a crop production farm turned into precision farming (weed management) under Hungarian conditions. The results show that the break-even point is at 205 hectares, in case of which the expected return on investment costs is included as well. In this case precision farming means rational pesticide use. Applying the concepts of integrated crop production to precision farming can help to found the most cost-efficient and economically viable crop production system.

Transition to market economy resulted in changing the main objective of agricultural economy but also caused decrease of agricultural income for most of the farms. As a consequence farms have been forced to seek additional sources of income. For a significant part of them rural tourism and accompanying services create such a chance. Growing interest in spending holiday and free time in rural areas and agritourism farms has been seen as partial solution of rural population’s economic problems. Traditional and regional products can be a specific part of agritourism product, create regional identity and uniqueness. Paper presents results of surveys conducted in agritourism farms in Czorsztyn, Wadowice, Andrychow and Bochnia Districts and samples of dwellers of Tarnow and Nowy Sącz. The surveys concerned gastronomic activities – board for tourists offered by agritourism farms and farmers knowledge of traditional and regional dishes and products. The survey of town dwellers concerned their expectations towards full- or part-board offered by agritourism farms and also their knowledge of traditional and regional dishes and products.