scholarly journals Smallholder Farms in Bulgaria and Their Contributions to Food and Social Security

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7635
Author(s):  
Lena Fredriksson ◽  
Marian Rizov ◽  
Sophia Davidova ◽  
Alastair Bailey

Bulgaria has a long tradition of smallholder farming, predominantly producing for self-consumption. As a result of land reform and farm restructuring, many rural households received agricultural land. Some developed commercial farms but most households stayed as subsistence farmers and used their small pieces of land to produce for self-consumption and market the excess output to top up their non-farm incomes or meagre pensions. They had little capital and insecure access to markets. The paper employs semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 10 smallholders for obtaining detailed information about individuals’ behaviour and exploring issues in greater detail. In particular, the study looks at the drivers of the diverse strategies pursued by smallholder farms, their importance for household food security and incomes, and the prospects of smallholder farms in the future, especially the possibilities for productivity increases. The Bulgarian study on contemporary smallholder farms shows that subsistence production constitutes a valuable safety net for households with low incomes, and therefore, it acts as an extension of the limited social security system of the country. Despite all the challenges faced by smallholders, half of the interviewed households succeeded to commercialise and increase marketable surplus. Policies for increased commercialisation of smallholder farms and a structural change in agriculture should address, besides market factors, the socioeconomic aspects which contribute to the persistence of subsistence farming. Furthermore, when prioritising different policies, the chosen livelihood strategies of the households should be taken into account.

Author(s):  
Tamara Smovzhenko ◽  
Oryslava Korkuna ◽  
Ivan Korkuna ◽  
Ulyana Khromyak

Nowadays, according to decentralization and current legislation (Land Code of Ukraine, Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine «On Self-Governance»), the public lands have been transferred to the CTCs since 1 February 2018. In 2018/2019, 788 CTCs received communal ownership of 1.68 ha of public lands. According to the Draft Law «On Amendments to Several Legal Documents of Ukraine on Agricultural Lands Turnover», the consolidated territorial communities become the legal entities and can acquire property rights to agricultural land plots. Therefore, transferring the lands to be used by the newly created CTCs is currently an urgent issue that requires extended scientific and practical research. The paper aims to research the role of land reform in Ukraine and its impact on increase of CTCs’ budget revenues. The stages of land reform and the development of the land reform in Ukraine as well as its implementation strategy are outlined. The disparities of the integrated satellite map and the data of the Land Cadaster of Ukraine in terms of unregistered lands are defined. The amount of a CTC budget’s increased revenues due to the reform is estimated. Statistical data on small, medium, and large farmers and their interest in the land reform are analyzed. The terms of selling the land to foreign investors and conditions of participation in land auctions are examined. The mechanisms of land purchase, selling, and lease in line with the land reform are suggested. Generalizing the presented aspects of the land reform in Ukraine and their impact on economic activity of the newly created CTCs, it can be argued that the process is quite positive and necessary for both communities and businesses in order to get additional budget revenues for CTCs. The land reform improves the living standards of Ukrainian people through the disclosure of the country’s agricultural capacity.


1993 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gino J. Naldi

The Government of Zimbabwe has only recently begun to implement the commitment of the liberation movements to give land to poor ‘communal’ farmers, especially those dispossessed by the whiteminority régime after Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. It needs to be recalled that by virtue of the Land Tenure Act of 1969 almost half of the country's agricultural land was allocated to Europeans, who had ‘greater access to the regions considered suited to intensive crop and livestock production’, and that ‘On average, each of the nearly 7,000 European farms was roughly 100 times the size of any of the 700,000 or so holdings in the Tribal Trust Lands’. The fact that much of this land was under-utilised only served to increase African resentment.


1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
John Pinder

THE 1950s WERE A WONDERFUL DECADE FOR APPLIED SOCIAL science: for the belief that reason addressed to economic and social problems can improve the human condition. Compare the 1950s with the 1930s and ask how much of the improvement was due to Keynes and Beveridge. It is inevitable that a generation of debunkers should follow whose answer would be ‘not much’. But that would have seemed a strange conclusion in the 1950s; and the view of the 1950s was surely right. We had full employment in place of 10 per cent unemployment in the 1920s and nearly 15 per cent in the 1930s; and after the first years of post-war reconstruction, it was reasonable to attribute this to Keynesian demand management. We had a safety net through which relatively few fell into poverty; and this was Beveridge's social security and the welfare state.


Author(s):  
Olena Pimenova

The historical analysis of the development of national forms of economy has been carried out. It has been determined that the most economically advantageous for society, vital, rational, socio-ecological-economic forms of economy are peasant economies and farms. The methodological basis of the study as to the identification of rational and effective forms of economy are general scientific methods, including methods of historical analysis, generalization, comparison, analysis and synthesis, methods of expert evaluation, graphical method. In the course of the research, the methods of historical analysis, generalization, analysis and synthesis were used in carrying out a retrospective analysis, in particular the research of scientific opinion on the effectiveness of such forms of economy as peasants and farms and the impact of land reform on their development; the method of expert evaluation in the survey of peasants and representatives from the administration of Radomyshl region of Zhytomyr oblast to determine their opinion – how the land reform will affect on the development of peasants and farms; graphical method for constructing tables and graphs. The study of the world experience in agriculture confirmed that the development of the farm model as a priority model of economy in agriculture is possible only with the active support of a state, as an institution that regulates land use through administrative and economic measures and provides legislation through limitation of purchase of land and the potential withdrawal of this land from agricultural circulation, and also involves the implementation of targeted programs through the financing of individual activity. An important function of state regulation is the conservation of the agricultural land fund. In developed countries, there are some restrictions on the land market to prevent latifundia. It is substantiated that in the course of land reform, the agrarian policy should be focused on preventing the creation of latifundia with large land tenure, as well as on the support, protection and development of peasant economies and farms as viable forms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 69-74
Author(s):  
Alexandr Vlasov ◽  
Darya Vasilieva ◽  
Velta Parsova

As result of land reform in Russian Federation the public administration of agricultural land has been totally transformed. Land reform was carried out in order to solve problems in the sphere of agriculture, housing construction, ecology, creating a plurality of land ownership forms, introducing land use payments, etc. The decision to cancel monopoly of state ownership in land and to create institution of private property was made. The land redistribution projects for each farm were made, where stock of shares, stock of land redistribution and stock of land administered by previous soviet village councils was represented. The example of the Samara region was used to develop mechanisms for transfer of public land to private ownership. Currently, the situation with use of the land in many agricultural enterprises can be considered as unsatisfactory due to unsystematic economic activity - there are no or are not implemented scientifically based crop rotations, natural soil fertility is not taken into account, there is no modern cartographic material indicating the size of the fields, degree of slope and degree of erosion. Significant deterioration of the agro-ecological situation and the spread of negative processes on arable land require changes in national land policy and development of comprehensive measures to organize rational use of land. In the near future, a significant modernization of national and federal land legislation is planned, which will affect all subjects of the Russian Federation in terms of the management and use of agricultural land.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-378
Author(s):  
Wulandari Dwi Etika Rini ◽  
Endang Siti Rahayu ◽  
Mohamad Harisudin ◽  
Supriyadi Supriyadi

The land is an important factor for people whose lives depend on the agricultural sector. The need for land for various uses has resulted in decreasing agricultural land which could have implications for decreasing food production. Alternative options which are expected to increase the potential for food production are the utilization of marginal land. Farmers with marginal land need to manage their production to meet household needs. So it is important to examine the marketable surplus, the level of commercialization, and the carrying capacity of marginal land. The research area was taken by purposive sampling method in Gunungkidul Yogyakarta. The samples taken were upland rice farmer households with the simple random sampling method. The marketable surplus analysis uses a marketable surplus formula, then the percentage is used to determine the level of farm commercialization. The carrying capacity analysis is carried out using the carrying capacity formula. The results showed that farmer households manage rice production by allocating an average of 59.1% for marketed and 40.9% for household consumption. The allocation of marketable surplus is greater than for household consumption, this shows that gogo rice farming households are towards commercially. The marginal land carrying capacity of 0.641 indicates that the land cannot be developed in an expansive and exploratory manner. The implication is in increasing upland rice production on marginal land, namely by an intensification of farming.


Author(s):  
David Etherington

There is another way and alternative to austerity. Despite the defeat of a Corbyn led (anti- austerity) Labour Party, there are conditions and opportunities for challenging neoliberalism and inequalities. Key to this is questioning the austerity narrative relating to the economy and public services. Alternative policies are assessed including for through collective bargaining, enhanced employment rights, a remodelled social security system which offers a adequate safety net and linking welfare to employment policies through job rotation. Democratising welfare and employment policy through local government is seen as central to a more inclusive agenda


Rural History ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Marta Błąd

AbstractWhen Poland was re-established as an independent state one hundred years ago, one of its political priorities was to implement a land reform, as the ‘agrarian question’ was an extremely sensitive socio-economic problem. In Poland at that time, two thirds of its inhabitants made their living by working in the agricultural sector. A ‘land craving’ phenomenon was notorious, as was rural poverty, especially among smallholders. On the other hand, almost half of the total area of farmland in the Second Polish Republic was held by huge landowners. The situation led to ever louder political calls for land redistribution to peasant smallholders. The Land Reform Implementation Act of 1920, and its amendment of 1925, laid legal foundations for land redistribution. By the Second World War, 2,654,800 hectares of land had undergone redistribution, as a result of which 734,100 new farms were established. However, this land reform did not achieve its goal, namely the empowering of efficient smaller farms, as quantitative analysis showed a continuing process of agricultural land fragmentation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anish Paul Antony ◽  
Kendra Leith ◽  
Craig Jolley ◽  
Jennifer Lu ◽  
Daniel J. Sweeney

In order to feed a growing global population projected to increase to 9 billion by 2050, food production will need to increase from its current level. The bulk of this growth will need to come from smallholder farmers who rely on generational knowledge in their farming practices and who live in locations where weather patterns and seasons are becoming less predictable due to climate change. The expansion of internet-connected devices is increasing opportunities to apply digital tools and services on smallholder farms, including monitoring soil and plants in horticulture, water quality in aquaculture, and ambient environments in greenhouses. In combination with other food security efforts, internet of things (IoT)-enabled precision smallholder farming has the potential to improve livelihoods and accelerate low- and middle-income countries’ journey to self-reliance. Using a combination of interviews, surveys and site visits to gather information, this research presents a review of the current state of the IoT for on-farm measurement, cases of successful IoT implementation in low- and middle-income countries, challenges associated with implementing the IoT on smallholder farms, and recommendations for practitioners.


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