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Purpose. This paper aims to give a system-wide overview of agricultural life cycle assessment (LCA), based on the understanding of agriculture as a complex providing humanity with food, energy and other vital resources and considering all forms of sector’s influence: environmental, social, and economic. This review is intended to outline the temporal and geographical spread of agricultural LCA research, the main aspects studied with LCA in agriculture, and relevant scientific themes via bibliometric analysis and an overview of high-quality scientific publications in this field. Methodology / approach. This study used traditional bibliometric research techniques: performance analysis, scientific mapping, and network analysis. Bibliometric analysis was conducted through the Bibliometrix R package in the RStudio and its extension – Biblioshiny. The bibliographic collection covers 259 academic English-language articles indexed in Scopus for 1999–2022. Results. The study identifies a significant growth in a number of agricultural LCA publications, a tendency of current LCA research to continue and complement earlier research findings, and to accentuate environmental aspects of agricultural activity. Developed countries lead this field of research in terms of productivity and impact. However, LCA studies are geographically concentrated, and collaboration between developed and developing countries is weak. The following issues shape the agri-LCA research structure: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions analysis; LCA of various impacts of agriculture; challenges of agriculture environmental impacts measuring; LCA usage to ensure agriculture sustainability; agri-LCA methodology. Emphasis on GHG emissions in agri-LCA could lead to biased decisions promoting climate-resilient agriculture but neglecting other impacts and dimensions of the sector’s sustainability. Originality / scientific novelty. It was found that the rapid development of the field of research featured a certain stability, continuity, and historical relationship between the issues studied. Research transform from a highly specialised topic into a broader one by the scope of publishing sources but are highly geographically concentrated and not equally distributed even within the European Union. As far as is known, these results have not been previously reported. Practical value / implications. The identified “closedness” of the research community leads to weak scientific progress. Sharing knowledge and involving a broader set of stakeholders to promote LCA application in agriculture globally must be a priority of scholars and policymakers.

Purpose. Potato is one of the most important crops to ensure food security globally; potato growing is also a source of income and livelihood for the poorest, especially in developing countries. In view of this, studies on factors affecting potato prices could stimulate agripolitical measures in food security, rural wealth, potato industry and small farms’ development. This paper aims to explore whether the factors affecting potato prices for business entities and farm households operating in the same (but peasant-driven) market are different. Based on the available statistical data and the research background, we focus on the relationships between wages, production (yields and harvested areas), and potato producers’ prices in Ukraine. Methodology / approach. Using the cross-sectional data on potato producer prices, harvested area, and yields of enterprises and households, and average monthly wages in Ukrainian regions for 2018–2020, we used a system of simultaneous equations to model behavior of potato producers’ prices (for enterprises and households) through the two-stage least squares method. Results. The Ukrainian potato industry is featured high rates of potato self-provision (through subsistence farming) and the dominance of farm households at the market, allowing exploring trends and factors of peasant-driven potato market development. The results obtained through modelling of an interrelation of potato producer prices indicate different potato price determinants for enterprises and households: price in enterprises adjusts to fluctuations of potato yields in both enterprises and households (calculated average elasticities are -0.27 and -0.55, respectively, indicating the more significant influence of the latter); households’ price responds to changes of enterprises’ potato prices and average monthly wage rates (with average elasticities 0.49 and 1.35, respectively). Originality / scientific novelty. Research results empirically evidence that households’ dominance and a large portion of food self-provision constrain the potato industry development. This enhances a better understanding of subsistence farming’s impact on markets and food industry development and extends the theoretical framework of households’ economics and peasant-driven market functioning. Practical value / implications. Understanding the role of households in the slow (obstacle) development of the potato industry reveals the need for a policy promoting storage and potato processing capacities development that could mitigate the adverse effects of peasant-driven market performance, decrease price vulnerability, and facilitate potato industry growth.

In view of climate change and population growth, making food system sustainable is a global concern. A lot of policies regulate this issue, but recent data show that global (and national) food systems are still far from the sustainability. Improvement of existing policies in the field of food system regulation requires a clear understanding of the food system sustainability concept itself: specification of its traits, attributes, measurement indicators, and goals. These issues are reflected in a lot of research papers, but none of these articles summarise the major trends, content, and features of the food system sustainability concept’s evolution. This study for the first time summarises history and contents of research in the field of concept and measurement of food system sustainability through bibliometric analysis of Scopus indexed papers for 1991-2022. The growth of scientific interest in this area, led by researchers from the USA, Italy, and France, was found to be wave-like with peaks following the global food crises appearance patterns. The results of this study show that modern perception of the concept (since 2018) is complicated and intertwined in the notions of systems and system thinking, sustainability, and life cycle assessment, contrasting to the previous views (1991-2018) focused on food production system and food security. In general, a little attention is given to social and economic aspects of food system sustainability, in contrast to environmental, food, and agri-food issues. The elaboration of one-size-fits-all policy and solutions favouring food systems sustainability is suggested to be unlikely due to the complexity of the concept's perception. Governance of food system sustainability should go in line with concrete institutional, economic, social, and natural environments that need to be comprehensively studied in a future. Studies from developing countries are of special interest in this context

Purpose. Under the background of the climate change and other crises, the world food system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to price fluctuations. This highlights the need to consider and better manage the risks associated with price volatility in accordance with the principles of a market economy and simultaneously protecting the most vulnerable groups of population. Responding to these challenges, in this study we aim to determine the main parameters of time series of potato sales prices in agricultural enterprises in Ukraine, to build an appropriate model, and to form a short-term (one-year) forecast. Methodology / approach. We used in the research the data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine on average monthly sales prices of potatoes in agricultural enterprises from December 2012 to July 2021 (104 observations) adjusted for the price index of crop products sold by enterprises for the month (with December 2012 base period). Decomposition was used to determine the characteristics of the time series; exponential smoothing methods (Holt-Winters and State Space Framework – ETS) and autoregressive-moving average were used to find the model that fits the actual data the best and has high prognostic quality. We applied the Rstudio forecast package to model and to forecast the time series. Results. The time series of potato sales prices in enterprises is characterized by seasonality (mainly related to seasonal production) with the lowest prices in November, and the highest – in June; although, other periods of price growth were identified during the year: in January and April. The ARMA (2, 2) (1,0)12 with a non-zero mean was found to be the best model for forecasting potatoes sales prices. ARMA (2, 2) (1,0)12, compared to the state-space exponential smoothing model with additive errors – ETS (A), better fits the observed data and provides more accurate forecasting model (with lower errors). Forecast made with ARMA (2, 2) (1,0)12 shows that potato sale prices in agricultural enterprises in November 2021 (months with the lowest price) will range from 2154.76 UAH/t to 7414.57 UAH/t, in June 2022 – from 3016.72 UAH/t to 14051.63 UAH/t (prices of July 2021) with a probability of 95%. The forecast’s mean absolute percentage error is 14.87%. Originality / scientific novelty. This research deepens the methodological basis for food prices modelling and forecasting, thus contributing to the agricultural economics science development. The obtained results confirm the previous research findings on the better quality of food prices forecasts made with autoregressive models (for univariate time series) compared with exponential smoothing. Additionally, the study reveals advantages of the state space framework for exponential smoothing (ETS) compared to Holt-Winters methods in case of time series with seasonality: although the ETS model overlaps with the observed (train) data, it is better in terms of information criteria and forecasting (for the test data). Practical value / implications. The obtained results can serve as an information basis for decision-making on potato production and sales by producers, on more efficient use of resources by the population, on more effective measures to support industrial potato growing, to implement social programs and food security policy by the government.

The article investigates the “systemic” dimension of the existing institutional‑legal and organizational peculiarities of the innovation policy in Ukraine, based on the IS approach, which is seen as one of the main guidelines for the innovation policy formation, and, in particular, underlies the Ukrainian framework as well. The authors found that state strategic documents do not sufficiently reflect the systemic character of the NIS, nor do they place linkages or firms at the core of the national innovation system. Areas are determined where the innovation policy cannot be realized completely because of the current organization of activities and powers of the central executive authorities in this field, specifically: the impact on business, the formation of infrastructure, and the development of linkages. European countries’ experience in the field of innovation policy implementation is explored, particularly, the creation and operating of the models of the national innovation agencies as well as the spectrum of their functions. Based on the European experience, it is proposed that a State Agency for Innovation and Development in Ukraine be created that will integrate the functions of regional project funding, provide advice, and realize the basic functions of the innovation intermediary.

The research subject is an aggregate of theoretic and methodical grounds for choice and organization of rural development innovation models based on infrastructure development, taking into consideration the world experience. Methodological and theoretical ground for the research is a systematic approach for studying socialeconomic and ecologic phenomena and processes under the market conditions. In order to solve some tasks, there are used several methods: abstract-logical method to determine the conception and methods of analysis and synthesis. The aim of the research is to study the models for innovation development of rural territories based on infrastructure development. Conclusions. Segregate scientific approaches to form the model of rural economy are ruralism and neoruralism. Ruralism is a way of thinking and idea representing ruralisation in the human community, the development of which is focused on securing food supply and needs of those who live and work in rural areas. Neoruralism is a multifunctional social-economic system, which is focused on broadening of powers for united territorial communities. The rural economy here is an open system, focused on securing rural inhabitants welfare. The idea that agricultural changes in terms of modern tendencies and effective models of rural development, especially in the sphere of agricultural modernization, as a ground for its sustaining power, improvement of competitive ability for agricultural production and to meet the WTO Ukrainian member requirements is proved. Strategic benchmarks for Ukrainian rural areas in accordance with the requirements of Europe 2020 strategy are smart development – balanced development of the economy and social sphere; constant development – abide by scientifically proved norms; inclusive development – taking into consideration social standards for development. Special institutions determining law institutional mechanism of innovation development are very important for the revival of rural areas and infrastructure development.