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The paper deals with the differentiation of gross added value of farms with a focus on mixed production from twelve selected European Union countries in view of the manner of farming. The objective is to define the effect of an ecological and conventional manner of farming on the differentiation of gross added value and to quantify the level of impact of subsidy policy on the elimination of the said inequality. The fulfillment of the said objective was based upon the quantification of the Gini coefficient, which was quantified for selected indicators on the basis of data from the FADN database for the year 2009. In order to assess the effect of the manner of farming on the differentiation of the analyzed indicators, a horizontal decomposition of the Gini coefficient was performed. On the other hand, a vertical decomposition of the Gini coefficient served to assess the effect of EU subsidy policy on the level of inequality of the indicator of gross added value. The obtained results indicate a lesser inequality of the economic productivity of European agricultural businesses, which is not significantly determined by an ecological or conventional manner of farming, but rather by the local specifics of individual countries and their agricultural-food markets, as well as the applied subsidy policy, which primarily in organic farming decreases the inequality of gross added value to a significant extent and strengthens the competitiveness as well as viability of agricultural businesses.

The report focuses on the assessment of the rate of inequality in the consumption of foodstuffs and beverages by households in the Czech Republic. It analyzes the said inequality on the basis of data from the Family Account Statistics for the period of 2001–2009. The main methodical tools for the performed analysis are the quantification of the Gini coefficient of natural consumption and the consumption expenditures for foodstuffs and beverages of Czech households, the construction, quantification and verification of consumption functions. The obtained results evidence a greater balance in the consumption of foodstuffs and beverages than which is shown by the allocation of the overall expenditures or income of Czech households. At the same time, the said inequality in the consumption of foodstuffs and beverages is characterized by a slightly declining tendency in time. With regard to individual categories of foodstuffs and beverages, the greatest inequality can be defined in the case of dispensable commodities, which are consumed by quantitatively wealthier strata of the population, who are simultaneously willing to pay a higher price for them. Thus, for a number of commodities, we can note the greater quality of foodstuffs and beverages consumed by higher income groups. These commodities may primarily be characterized as having a greater price elasticity. On the other hand, there are foodstuffs in the case of which consumers react more flexibly to changes in income, but whose consumption is relatively stable. Therefore, inequality of consumption is not unequivocally associated with income elasticity, but rather with price elasticity.

Common agricultural policy has fundamentally projected itself into the business management of individual agricultural businesses. The submission addresses the assessment of the effects of subsidy policy on the production, costs and profit of agricultural businesses that engage predominantly in plant production. At the same time, it determines the effects of subsidy policy on demand for the production factors of labour and land. To the research questions more than 100 agriculture businesses were analyzed. The date from financial statements enabled to construct production function model, to quantify the cost function, the function of demand for land, the demand for the production factor of labour and finally the profit function was constructed. The results of research evidence the fact that direct payments have a negative effect on the production of agricultural businesses, but on the other hand they initiate demand for agricultural land and increase the profit of agricultural producers. The results also show direct payments do not motivate agriculture businesses towards increased production. The direct payments also increase the demand for production factor of land and they have also a significant effect on the value of profit.

The paper deals with the analysis of productivity and efficiency differences between Czech and Slovak milk producers. The estimate of stochastic metafrontier multiple output distance function revealed that both Czech and Slovak milk producers highly exploit their production possibilities. On the other hand, productivity differences were pronounced. The Slovak regions were found being falling behind. Only the West Slovak regions can keep pace with competitors. The Central Bohemia and Moravian-Silesian regions are the most productive regions. We found that technical efficiency and management component are the most important factors determining the regional differences.

The presented article focuses on an analysis of the phenomena appearing in the implementation of the transition from classic conventional technology in the production of agricultural food products to an ecological manner of farming. The main objective is an empirical analysis of the determinants of the implementation of ecological production technology, whereby not only is their definition focused on, but also the quantification of the level of their effect. The primary methodological tool for achieving the objective is a binary choice model, which was estimated in three variants - probit model, logit model and linear probability model. These estimations are conducted on the basis of the unbalanced panel data from 531 agricultural businesses - legal entities obtained over the time period 2004-2008. Results of the analyses indicate that the transition to and implementation of the organic production technology is negatively affected primarily by the higher age of the farmers and the high productivity of labour. On the other hand, the subsidies for the support of organic agriculture, as well as a high return on cost can be considered as the factors which positively influence the implementation of the organic technology. Given this fact, it is possible, through agricultural policy, to effectively influence the number of organically managing farmers, as well as the acreage of the organically managed land. And from the achieved outputs, the type of farm is subsequently characterised where a transition to organic farming may most likely be expected.