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Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and challenges associated with sustainable development have emphasized the need for local food to increase the food system’s resilience. Therefore, this research analyzes the food self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) and revealed comparative advantage (RCA) of cereals in Western Balkan countries (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and North Macedonia) and compares them with the same indicators for all European countries. The methodological framework of this research examined the food self-sufficiency and macro-level competitiveness for cereals in Western Balkan countries, as well as in Europe. The results of the research showed that all European countries have higher self-sufficiency in cereals (109.12%) and higher revealed comparative advantage (2.21) compared to the group of Western Balkans countries (71.89%; 1.53), which have lower values of the mentioned indicators. The results of econometric modeling for the Western Balkan countries showed that GDP per capita negatively influences the SSR of cereals, and agriculture value added per worker and area harvested under cereals positively influence the SSR of cereals. When it comes to the influence on the RCA of cereals in the Western Balkan region, the critical influence is GDP per capita, political stability, and agriculture value added per worker, all of which positively influence the RCA.

European integration encourages rural diversification and innovation, supporting the creation of non-agricultural jobs and strengthening local economies. This scientific paper explores the typology of rural areas in Serbia and compares them to rural areas in the European Union. Methodologically, the research leverages multivariate statistical analysis, precisely factor and cluster analysis. The primary objective is to understand these regions’ diversity and commonalities comprehensively. The core focus of this study revolves around the significance of these findings within the context of Serbia’s European integration process. The analysis includes 12 variables that create a model of rurality, i.e., the four dimensions of rurality: level of economic development, structural characteristics of agriculture, demographic structure, and spatial characteristics. Based on the model of rurality, a rural typology is created at the regional level, which records nine statistically significant groups of rural regions in the EU, including Serbia. Cluster 2 includes most of the analyzed territory of Serbia (about 70%), and this group is the most rural, given the negative characteristics of this type of rural area. These results are devastating, and the creators of Serbia’s rural policy must consider the multidimensional nature of rural areas when defining future strategies.

Serbia is a significant producer of tobacco in Europe and the only country in Europe where tobacco production is growing. Due to privatization, some of the most important multinational companies are now producing tobacco products in Serbia. Bearing in mind the liberalization of the market and the harmful effect tobacco products have on health, this research tried to analyze the tobacco and tobacco products sector in Serbia. The study’s main goal was to analyze the characteristics of the tobacco and tobacco supply chain in Serbia and determine comparative advantages and levels of integration with the world market. The methodology used in this study included the index of concentration of tobacco manufacturers, followed by a panel regression analysis to determine factors that affected profitability in this industry. Also, foreign trade performances were analyzed using the indices of revealed comparative advantages and integration. The research was conducted for the period from 2013 to the last available year. The results indicate the growth of tobacco production despite the decline in the number of farms, the highly concentrated production of tobacco products, and the significant intensification of foreign trade despite modest comparative advantages.

Due to the environmental radicalization of European politics, which is reflected in the European Green Deal, Farm to Fork strategy, and new CAP 2023–2027, this paper aims to determine the impact of agri-environmental indicators on soil productivity based on the land productivity function model. The paper focuses on the Western Balkans countries, which are in the process of European integration and which, in the coming period, need to harmonize their agricultural policy with the CAP. First, the aggregate Cobb–Douglas production function has been used to create a land productivity function. Then, the sources of land productivity growth have been calculated, which can be particularly interesting in the context of agri-environmental indicators, such as fertilizer use and livestock density. The research results showed that land productivity is the most elastic concerning changes in the number of livestock units per hectare. Consequently, reducing livestock units had a markedly negative effect on productivity. In addition, the research results showed that using mineral fertilizers is a crucial source of growth in land productivity in these countries. These results imply that the creators of the agricultural policy must carefully assess the pace at which they will harmonize ecological and economic goals, especially if they take into account the current Ukraine crisis that can disrupt the food market.

Improvements in productivity and efficiency, together with agricultural modernization, are crucial in the process of future sustainable development. As Western Balkan (WB) countries are in the process of integration into the European Union (EU), the importance of agricultural efficiency in an economic and environmental context and the actuality of the problems of the agricultural sector are very important. In that context, the paper’s main goal is to examine agriculture’s technical efficiency in the EU and WB. The additional goal is to group analyzed countries by agricultural performances. A stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) is used to calculate the technical efficiency of agriculture. Results have shown a significant difference in technical efficiency between WB and the EU. Furthermore, the cluster analysis has indicated the connection between overall economic development and agricultural development, partially “deformed” by agri-environmental and climate conditions. The exogenous factors do not have a crucial influence on the overall technical efficiency of agriculture in observed countries, indicating that the endogenous factors must be improved. The paper impacts recommendations for optimizing the use of inputs and improving the educations of farmers in WB countries to achieve economic and environmental goals.

Throughout the EU, small farms have varying degrees of importance, which points to the need to analyse the role of small farms. This study, in addition to EU countries, includes Serbia, a candidate country for EU membership. This study aims to provide an overview of agriculture’s structural characteristics by creating an Index of Agricultural Structural Characteristics (ASC Index). The analysis was carried out at the regional level, which provides a more detailed overview of the structural characteristics of agriculture in the EU and Serbia. The results indicate several regional differences in the EU along north–south and west–east divisions. Serbian agriculture is predominantly made up of small farms and corresponds to the southern model of European agriculture. In terms of the west–east division, Serbian agriculture also corresponds to the structure of Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEEC), with which it shares a historical heritage of a centrally planned economy. Changes in Serbian agricultural policy must be directed toward regions with unfavourable structural characteristics. Special attention should be given to small farms in cases where there is potential to improve competitiveness and where there is a good basis for improving the social sustainability of rural areas.

This paper focuses on a possible connection between food security and the migrant crisis that began in 2015, which had a tremendous impact on the European Union as well as on the Mediterranean area. The goal of this paper is to determine if there is a correlation between the number of migrants and the levels of food security in both their homeland countries and destination countries. The Promethee method was used to attempt to answer this question. Unfortunately, the analysis is limited due to lack of data for certain countries concerning food security caused by current poor political situations. Nevertheless, the results showed that the best-ranked countries by food security are mostly EU countries. These countries do not have issues with food security, especially in comparison to countries in the Middle East. Also, countries with a high level of food security and political stability have the highest influx of migrants, which suggests there is also an economic motivation for migration. Finally, the analysis confirmed a strong correlation between countries’ achieved level of food security and the number of migrants.

As the pork supply chain was perceived through three level of chain: agricultural sector, processing and distribution sector, the main objective of this paper was the estimation of the vertical price transmission in the pork supply chain in the Republic of Serbia for period 2008-2015. The analysis of the price transmission was related on the presence of the asymmetry and was estimated with AECM model. The results indicated the presence of the negative asymmetry in the price transmission and one of the main causes of the presence of asymmetry was the abuse of the market power by processing sector, i.e. slaughtering industry.

Trade agreements with the European Union (EU) and Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) significantly influenced the liberalisation of agri-food products in Western Balkan (WB) countries. In all Western Balkan countries, there has been an intensification of the trade of agri-food products and a partial change in the regional and commodity structures of trade. This paper aims to identify comparative advantages of agri-food sectors and consider its tendencies during the EU integration process. Additionally, this paper will discuss some opportunities for improvement of the export positions of agri-food products. In that context and based on the literature review, the indexes of revealed comparative advantages and its modified version will be used as a main method for analysis in this research. Results showed that all Western Balkan countries, except Albania, have comparative advantages in exporting agri-food products. It is evident that Serbia has the highest level of comparative advantages in this sector. Moreover, this paper suggests that all countries should aim to provide the best possible positions for their agri-food products during pre-accession negotiations for EU membership and take the necessary steps towards increasing the level of competitiveness in the common EU market.

Rural regions with a larger share of the primary sector in the overall economy are limited in their ability to achieve a sufficient level of competitiveness. In countries such as Serbia, where rural areas play an important role, addressing the problems affecting these areas is important for overall development. The purpose of this study is to determine the socioeconomic performance of the rural regions of Serbia and the EU in order to indicate the position of Serbia’s rural areas in the process of European integration. NUTS 3 (NUTS 2 for Germany) was used for analysis, and from this an Index of Socioeconomic Performance was created. This Index was created using Factor Analysis. The results point to Serbia lagging behind other EU regions in terms of development, with most of Serbia’s rural regions receiving the lowest ratings. These results are cause for alarm and indicate a need to create strategies that will direct resources towards key issues in these areas, whose potential would be adequately used through the implementation of rural policy measures, with the aim of overall socioeconomic development.

All CEFTA countries had very similar stages of economic development after World War II. Many of them were centrally-planned socialist economies and the political changes that have occurred in these countries in the late 20th century caused changes in the whole economic system, as well as in the agricultural sector. Aim of this paper is to compare economic performances of agriculture of these countries with former CEFTA countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia) which joined EU after 2004. The development performances of agriculture are considered according to the production and export performances of this economic sector, using a comparative approach. The results showed that there is a gap in development of agriculture between CEFTA countries and selected EU countries, so performances of agricultural sector are far from EU.

Abstract Background Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a severe condition, often co-occurring with depression and anxiety, that strongly affects the quality of life (QoL) in some patients. Conversely, depressive and anxiety symptoms are associated with a 2–3 fold increase in mortality risk and were shown to act independently of typical risk factors in CHF progression. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of depression, anxiety, and QoL on the occurrence of rehospitalization within one year after discharge in CHF patients. Methods 148 CHF patients were enrolled in a 10-center, prospective, observational study. All patients completed two questionnaires, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Questionnaire Short Form Health Survey 36 (SF-36) at discharge timepoint. Results It was found that demographic and clinical characteristics are not associated with rehospitalization. Still, the levels of depression correlated with gender (p ≤ 0.027) and marital status (p ≤ 0.001), while the anxiety values ​​were dependent on the occurrence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, levels of depression (HADS-Depression) and anxiety (HADS-Anxiety) did not correlate with the risk of rehospitalization. Univariate logistic regression analysis results showed that rehospitalized patients had significantly lower levels of Bodily pain (BP, p = 0.014), Vitality (VT, p = 0.005), Social Functioning (SF, p = 0.007), and General Health (GH, p = 0.002). In the multivariate model, poor GH (OR 0.966, p = 0.005) remained a significant risk factor for rehospitalization, and poor General Health is singled out as the most reliable prognostic parameter for rehospitalization (AUC = 0.665, P = 0.002). Conclusion Taken together, our results suggest that QoL assessment complements clinical prognostic markers to identify CHF patients at high risk for adverse events. Clinical Trial Registration: The study is registered under http://clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01501981, first posted on 30/12/2011), sponsored by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.