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Our paper tested the role of local population in development of rural municipalities. We focused especially on attitudes and general characteristics of people and tried to answer the question to which extent is the success of village development connected with the kind of people living there. In other words, determining the role of cultural and social capital in rural development. Presented results are based on work carried out by a research team within the three-year project entitled “Countryside as a Space for Living or just a Space for Surviving”, supported by the Czech Ministry of Agriculture 1 . We analyzed statistical data from a fifteen-year period (1995-2009). From the rural area with more than 6,000 villages that fit to OECD definition, villages from sub-urban zones were excluded, leaving an area with approximately 4,500 villages. We decided that demographic development would serve as a main indicator of village prosperity - the increasing number of population during our analyzed period. Four thousand villages were statistically divided into five groups in terms of growing or decreasing number of population due to a different level of combination of two factors - rate of population growth (crude rate of natural increase) and rate of migration (crude rate of net migration). One thousand respondents, from one hundred villages selected at random, were asked about their life conditions in their village. The results we gained partly confirm our hypothesis that the role of cultural capital is not negligible for determining the type of development.

This article presents the results of an international comparative study on food self-provisioning, an activity still widespread in the countries of the Global North. We collected the data in a sociological survey done in 2010 as a part of the household energy use research project GILDED. We selected a region with urban and rural areas as a case study in each of the five EU countries, including Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Our article raises two main research questions: (1) What is the level of food self-provisioning in the regions? (2) Who participates in it? Additionally, we inquired into the motivations of self-provisioners using the results of analyses of sociodemographic and food consumption habits for their interpretation. We found that the level of self-provisioning varies considerably among the regions. Its share ranges from 13 percent in Dutch urban areas to 58 percent in German rural areas. The effects of some sociodemographic and geographic factors differ significantly among the countries. However, we can summarize that living in one's own property, living in a house or in a rural area, having a partner or children, being retired, or having a low income increases the probability of food self-provisioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Central European Agriculture is the property of Journal of Central European Agriculture and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Research Papers of the Wroclaw University of Economics / Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wroclawiu is the property of Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objectives: This study to assess the environmental pollution status in streams (Loutecky, Spicak, Olsina, Trebovicky, Polecnicky and Luzny) from the Boletice area., Design: Were determined of some metal (Hg, Pb, Cd) concentrations in the muscle and correlations among selected metals as well as standard length and total weight in brown trouth - Salmo trutta morpha fario., Results: The contents of the analyzed metals in muscles were Hg 0.19-0.72, Pb 0.01-0.6 and Cd 0.020-0.083 mg/kg wet weight basis and these concentrations did not exceed the limits admissible in the Czech Republic., Conclusions: The Czech republic permissible limit for Hg (0.5 mg/kg to omnivors, 1 mg/kg to predators), Pb (0.3 mg/kg) and Cd (0.05 mg/kg) defined in the Codex Alimentarius for safe human consumption exceeded in 6%, 3%, and 0% of analyzed samples for Hg, Pb and Cd respectively. On an average, the order of metal concentrations in the fish muscle was: Hg>Pb>Cd.