scholarly journals Sustainability Assessment and Reporting in Agriculture Sector

Author(s):  
Edward Kassem ◽  
Oldřich Trenz ◽  
Jiří Hřebíček ◽  
Oldřich Faldík

Sustainability assessment is a mainstream business activity that demonstrates the link between the organization’s strategy and commitment to a sustainable global economy. Sustainability indicators describe the environmental, social, economic and governance performance of Small and Medium‑sized Businesses/Enterprises (SMB/SME). Unfortunately, their implementations in the Czech Republic show a low level of engagement in sustainability assessment. The paper presents the results of the authors’ research in sustainability assessment of SMB/SMEs in the agriculture sector of the Czech Republic. An appropriate set of key performance indicators (KPIs) in four dimensions (economy, environment, social and governance) was developed to suit the SMB/SMEs sustainability assessment in the agriculture sector. A set of KPIs is proposed to help SMB/SMEs to avoid the barriers of sustainability assessment. These indicators are based mainly on Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture, Global Reporting Initiatives Frameworks and on current research state‑of‑the‑art. They have been created following the analysis of a number of agricultural enterprises over the world, particularly within European countries.

Author(s):  
Jiří Hřebíček ◽  
Oldřich Trenz ◽  
Eliška Vernerová

Current trends of agri-environmental indicators evaluation (i.e., the measurement of environmental performance) and farm reporting are discussed in the paper focusing on the agriculture sector. From the perspective of agricultural policy, there are two broad decisions to make: which indicators to recommend and promote to farmers, and which indicators to collect to assist in agriculture policy-making. We introduce several general approaches for indicators to collect to assist in policy-making (European Union, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) in the first part of our paper and given the differences in decision-making problems faced by these sets of decision makers. We continue in the second part of the paper with a proposal of indicators to recommend and promote to farmers in the Czech Republic.


Author(s):  
Petr Řehoř ◽  
Jaroslav Vrchota

Project management is one of the most important management tool in many enterprises. Agricultural enterprises with project management are able to foresee their future. Their managers are able to identify upcoming problems earlier and get ready to them in advance. Crisis is seen as a phenomenon more common than rare and it is therefore essential that the enterprises respond by reflecting the aspects and impacts of the crisis in their corporate strategy, and the managers learn to manage crises effectively. The paper deals with a single research of the management of small and medium‑sized enterprises in the Czech Republic. It is focused on the use of projects in farm management and evaluation of the significance of the crisis managers of these enterprises. Only about 15 % of enterprises manage its organization by projects. The crisis occurs in all organizations, in varying degrees and intensity. Most often agricultural enterprises are faced with a crisis caused by the change in legislation and bureaucracy. The importance of a crisis was evaluated by the managers with an average rate of 3.6 (where 5 was the highest). The questionnaire method was used for primary data collection. The limitation of the paper covers areas such the sample (34 enterprises), methodology and data.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 3745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Soldi ◽  
Maria José Aparicio Meza ◽  
Marianna Guareschi ◽  
Michele Donati ◽  
Amado Insfrán Ortiz

Sustainability is a topic that is at the center of current discussions in the political, economic, social, and environmental fields. For its analysis, an integral and multidisciplinary vision is needed. This work aims to assess the sustainability of agricultural systems in Paraguay through a comparison applying SAFA (Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems) indicators. The research focuses on 15 case studies on the territory of the Eastern Region of Paraguay divided into five classes of agricultural systems: agribusiness, conventional peasant family farming, agroecological peasant family farming, neo-rural farming, and indigenous agriculture. Data were collected through interviews with producers and key informants, direct observation, and scientific literature research in order to assess, through the SAFA Tool Software, the level of sustainability of each agricultural system as a whole and for each sustainability dimension (political, environmental, economic, and social dimension) in a comparative way. It has emerged that producers belonging to conventional peasant family farming, agroecological peasant family farming, neo-rural farming, and indigenous agriculture have achieved levels of sustainability that are similar to each other and very good in all four dimensions of sustainability. Meanwhile, agribusiness achieved moderate scores in the dimensions of governance and environmental integrity, and was good in the economic and social dimension.


2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (No. 4) ◽  
pp. 160-167
Author(s):  
Veronika Fenyves ◽  
Károly Pető ◽  
János Szenderák ◽  
Mónika Harangi-Rákos

The Visegrad countries – or the V-4 countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – is strong regional cooperation of four EU member states in Eastern-Central-Europe aimed at strengthening the positions of the members on both a European and a global level. The aim of this research is to analyse the capital structure of the agricultural and food companies in the V4 Member States. The results show that more profitable companies were less dependent on debt finance, while the fast-growing companies had limited access to the financial market. Company size had a significant effect only in the Czech Republic. Overall, the capital structure seemed to be strongly affected by the farm structure and the relative company size.


2014 ◽  
Vol 60 (No. 7) ◽  
pp. 314-322
Author(s):  
A. Foltínová ◽  
J. Špička

The article aims at the evaluation and comparison of the structure of costs linked to the milk production in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The paper focuses on the potential of the cost controlling in agricultural production. The analysis is based on data from the comparable sample surveys of costs and yields of agricultural commodities carried out by the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information, Prague, and the Research Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics, Bratislava, in the period 2007–2012. The authors apply the contribution margin calculation and the gross margin calculation. Using target costing, the upper limits of variable and fixed costs are set to reach the break-even point. One of the main finding is that the average costs per litre of milk are by 15.3% higher in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic. It is caused by a significantly lower milk yield in Slovakia. Cost controlling based on the knowledge about the structure of the average costs of milk production can help farmers to better manage their business.  


2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (No. 10) ◽  
pp. 435-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Střeleček ◽  
J. Lososová

ThearticledescribesthelayoutofplantproductionandlivestockdensityintheCzechRepublicin2003 according to a sample survey of the Czech Statistical Office.Theproductionorientationof agriculturalenterprisesis definedas a small amount of market products that represent the predominant part of revenues. Grain crops, pork meat, milk and non-food crops represent the production orientation of Czech agriculture. Thesecommoditiesrepresentmorethan70%oftotal agricultural production in the Czech Republic. In this article, the authors have attempted to definearegionalclassification according to production orientation of agricultural enterprises and intensity of agricultural production.


2011 ◽  
Vol 57 (No. 3) ◽  
pp. 103-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Střeleček ◽  
J. Lososová ◽  
R. Zdeněk

Every year, an analysis of economic results of a sample of agricultural enterprises farming in various production and climatic conditions in the territory of the Czech Republic is carried out by applying economic statistical methods. Based on these results, long-term trends of economic results and their influencing factors are defined. This article is based on the analysis of development of economic indicators of a sample of agricultural enterprises in the Czech Republic in the period 2003–2009, divided according to the proportion of the LFA. The year 2009 brought, in comparison with the previous years, a strong deterioration in economic results. In 2009, the economic result was the worst during the whole monitored period. The decrease in the average number of workers together with the increase in labour productivity manifests a long-term tendency. Agricultural subsidies tend also to grow in the long-term even though their growth has been slowing down.


ACC Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Petr Blaschke ◽  
Jaroslav Demel ◽  
Iouri Kotorov

The aim of this article is to assess the innovation performance of innovative small, medium-sized, and large enterprises operating in the manufacturing industry in two European countries – the Czech Republic (CR) and Finland, and to determine their position within the EU based on a comparison with average values of created Fictitious EU Country (FEUC). The FEUC includes the indicators and population of the EU member countries whose data were available. The performed analysis is based on the use of selected key performance indicators (related mainly to inputs that are expected to contribute to innovations) evaluating the enterprises´ innovation performance. The conducted research tries to identify the most significant drivers of innovation performance with regard to the size group of enterprises. Moreover, the achieved results are further compared within the innovation environment of the CR and Finland as well as the EU as a whole. It is worth highlighting the innovation resources of Finnish mainly small but partly also medium-sized enterprises, which in some monitored indicators occupy a much more significant share than in the case of the CR. This fact can indicate a particular signal, which size group of enterprises should become a target group of public support aiming to boost innovation performance.


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