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Paper's aim is to shed a light on theoretical and practical aspects of taken measures by the Russian government on agriculture business optimization in Southern Russia. Moreover, the paper develops methodology as recommendation for the small agriculture business in Russia based on economy theories, previous studies in the area of agriculture business development. This study analyses federal and regional governmental initiatives and programs addressing optimization of small agriculture business in the period of economic crisis and legislative changes in the agricultural sector in Russia. The paper employs different models in investigating specific methods as systematic-functional, dynamic, structural-logical, statistical, clustering and graphic methods for analyzing of the agriculture business sector development in Southern Russia. The paper suggests that there is particular mutual impact between governmental policies and agricultural production, which affects the small business in agriculture sector on national level. Furthermore, the study suggests that exist several measures, which might increase the economic efficacy of agriculture business, which would enable balancing the factors coming from the endogenous interventions. The paper findings are addressing new criteria for evaluating the social effect from the agriculture business current development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present economic situation of food industry in Poland on the background of the EU countries in the years 2011-2015. The authors used tabular and descriptive methods to present the changes in the economic situation of food industry enterprises and analysed turnover, value added, number of employees and number of companies. We calculated the median, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, skewedness and kurtosis to analyse the changes in turnover and value added of food industry in EU countries. The survey proves that the food industry is developing well. Consolidation has been noticed, which means that the food companies are growing while their number is decreasing. The turnover of the food industry increased in the years 2011-2015 in almost in all EU countries, excluding Finland (-3.5 %) and Sweden (-5.7 %). The value added of the food industry decreased in the years 2011-2015 only in the Czech Republic (-6.9 %), the Netherlands (-2.1 %), Spain (-3.5 %). The number of food industry companies decreased in the years 2011- 2015 only in Austria (-0.7 %), Belgium (-9.4 %), Denmark (-0.2 %), Finland (-2.8 %), Germany (-2.5 %) and Spain (-13.3 %). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on evolution of the economic structure is an important part of the state-of-the art in economics. As basic indices indicating the significance of agricultural sector have been decreasing, it is important to study a role of the primary sector for employment. This is especially reasonable for rural areas. The main aim of the paper is to investigate transformation of employment structure across predominantly rural Polish subregions (NUTS 3), particularly, changes in employment in the primary sector. Data of the Central Statistical Office of Poland on the sectoral structure of employment in predominantly rural Polish subregions in 2010 and 2016 were applied for the shift-share analysis. All predominantly rural subregions were characterized by relatively high rates of employment in the primary sector, both at the beginning as well as at the end of the investigated period. However, the primary and secondary sectors were characterized by negative values describing the industry-mix effect (IM), which indicates negative impact of subregional specialization – employment in these sectors grow slower comparing to the national average. There are only 10 (out of 31) subregions characterized by positive values of the regional shift effects (RS). Alongside with a negative industry-mix effect, it indicates that the primary sector was a poor performer nationally as a sector of employment but performance was better in these subregions than at the national level. Negative values both for IM and RS (21 subregions) indicate that the primary sector was a poor performer nationally as a sector of employment and even poorer in these subregions than at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas, defined as land outside towns, except industrial areas, account for over 93% of the area of Poland. They are attractive as a places of work, residence, leisure, as well as places where agricultural and non-agricultural business activities can be conducted. Agriculture is naturally associated with rural areas. Currently, apart from the agricultural function and (depending on the socioeconomic, natural or historical conditions) rural areas are also places of leisure, recreation, residence or industrial activities. This is a consequence of implementation of the concept of multi-functional development of rural areas, in which conditions are created for diverse business activities, while respecting environmental constraints. Such a multifunctional approach must take into account the interests of all parties to avoid spatial conflicts. Therefore, actions aimed at the development of rural areas should be based on an indepth analysis of the value of the area under consideration, they should take into account natural conditions (soil, climate, terrain) of the land for conducting agricultural activities, but also take into account environmental, social and economic aspects. Objective and historical conditions affecting agriculture in Poland and the experience gained so far indicate that there is a need to change the spatial arrangement of agricultural areas. This is because of the characteristic features of agriculture in Poland, which include a disadvantageous structure of farms in terms of their area, small size of farms, insufficient technical infrastructure in villages and difficult soil conditions. Rural areas in Poland, including agriculture, are undergoing deep structural changes in regard to agricultural production, but also to farm size and layout, demographic and spatial structures as well as technical and social infrastructure. The changes taking place in rural areas in Poland are greatly affected by the Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union. As a member of the EU, Poland has been receiving aid since 2004 and has been implementing actions within Rural Development Programmes. The aim of this paper is to analyse the transformations that have been taking place in rural areas in Poland and to present selected factors and causes of the changes in rural spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]