In the article there were presented the results of survey conducted in 2011, among 250 farmholders in the area of Opolskie Voivodship. The aim of research was determination of knowledge about cross-compliance possessed by agricultural producers from Opolskie Voivodship and consequences resulting from its realization. On the basis of research it is possible to state that the level of agricultural producers’ knowledge, regarding cross-compliance, is not satisfactory and, therefore, requires immediate filling. Investigation constitutes the part of broader research project involving the authors’ examination of the knowledge possessed by agricultural producers from southwest Poland about the mentioned subject. The articles published so far have referred to the knowledge about cross-compliance possessed by agricultural producers from Lower Silesia and Łódzkie Voivodship.

Recently, the yen carry trade is perceived to be one of the most widely used currency speculation strategy. The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between the yen carry trade activity and the related variables. The study is focused on the Japanese and U.S. financial variables. It is assumed that carry trade activity is affected by the interest rate differential between U.S. and Japan, JPY/USD exchange rate and the S&P 500 option implied volatility index (VIX). The paper investigates above relationship by the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. The results suggest that JPY/USD exchange rate is the only variable which has a significant impact on carry trade activity. It is shown that the depreciation of Japanese yen against U.S. dollar leads to the increase in yen carry trade activity.

The paper deals with development in nominal incomes and household expenditures for food and their share in total expenditures from the perspective of various social groups of households in Slovakia. There are analyzed the changing patterns in the structure of demand for meat prices and the impact on total expenditure on meat and meat products in the households of employees, households of self-employed persons and households of pensioners. During examining the sensitivity of demand to changes in consumer meat prices in different social groups of households own-price elasticity of demand was estimated, as well as cross-price elasticity.

The article discusses1 the right to information as one of the most important foundations for protection of consumer rights in the context of The Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011. The authors present the definition of a consumer under the Polish law and principal EU regulations. They discuss changes in consumer needs which took place over the last 30 years, and expectations consumers have regarding the food products. They evaluate disclosure requirements as set forth in the Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on the provision of food information to consumers in light of those needs and expectations. For now this assessment needs to be restricted to legal aspects as the implementation aspects will not be evident until 2014 when the Regulation comes into effect for food producers.

The article presents the main issues of Fair Trade. According to the authors Fair Trade is a very important idea, while a programme designed to change the location and raising the standard of living of a large population of poor regions of the world. Empirical data derived from two sources, the world’s largest organizations of Fair Trade: the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), are presented in tabular and graphical form. It should be noted that the volume of production and sales of Fair Trade products over the years have been increasing steadily (double-digit levels of an annual growth rate). The main Fair Trade products are: coffee, cocoa, bananas and cane sugar. The largest importers of Fair Trade production in the years 2004–2011 were the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Majority of all farmers and workers within the Fairtrade1 system live in Africa. Harmful intervention, unethical money allocation, corruption and overproduction argument are the most negative aspects of Fair Trade considered by the economists.

The article analyzes the share of international trade and foreign capital in non-farm companies in rural areas in 2005 and 2010. It enabled verification of the hypothesis on changes, forms and levels of international business. It argues that the internationalisation of the researched companies depends on the size of the company as well as its location. The important determinants influence the process: potential and agglomeration effect. They are responsible for the differentiation of international business activities of companies in agricultural and urbanised areas. The argued phenomena exert negative influence on sustainable development of national economy.

Two dynamic models of stochastic programming were constructed for the West Pomeranian Voivodship. They comprised four successive years of varied agriclimatic conditions, with and without EU subsidies. Model I referred to farms growing crops, whereas Model II referred to those growing crops and livestock. Both models accounted for random parameters of the objective function, which constituted the matrix of farm income achieved in 10 regions of the West Pomeranian Voivodship. Those models were solved by means of three methods using the MATLAB software. The results comprise a precise area of the particular cultures and the fallows, the joint farm income achieved in the four analyzed years and the risk accompanying the accomplishment of it.