[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ijfaec/283769.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability Of Bulgarian Farms

Author

Listed:
  • Bachev, Hrabrin
  • Terziev, Dimitar
Abstract
Assessing sustainability of agricultural farms is among the most topical issues for researchers, farmers, investors, administrators, politicians, interests groups and public at large. In academic publications, official documents and agricultural practices social, economic and environmental aspects (pillars) of sustainability are assessed, while critical “governance” functions of the farm ignored. Nevertheless, comparative governance efficiency often (pre)determines the overall sustainability of a farm despite its (high) productivity, social responsibility or eco-conservation. Most frameworks usually employ “universal” approach for “faceless” farms and “anonymous” environment despite that real socio-economic, institutional and natural conditions are critical for sustainability. Assessment systems are not hierarchical and lack systemic organization of sustainability components leading to arbitrary selection of indicators. Besides, they are too simplified (few indicators), unilateral (“pure” economic, ecological, etc.), or too complicated and impossible to use. In this presentation we suggest a holistic approach for assessing absolute and comparative sustainability of farms of different juridical type, size, product specialization, ecological and geographical location in Bulgaria. It encompass governance, economic, social, and environmental aspects which are analyzed by a hierarchical system of 12 principles, 21 criteria, 45 indicators and reference values. Study, including 190 typical holdings, has found out that the overall sustainability of Bulgarian farms is good, with superior levels for environmental and social sustainability, and inferior level for governance and economic sustainability. There are great variations in sustainability levels of farms of different type and location as well as in shares of holdings with unlike sustainability level. In conclusion, we make recommendations for improvement of sustainability research and managerial practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Bachev, Hrabrin & Terziev, Dimitar, 2018. "Sustainability Of Bulgarian Farms," International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics (IJFAEC), Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Department of Economics and Finance, vol. 6(2), April.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:ijfaec:283769
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.283769
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/283769/files/Vol6.No1.pp73.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.283769?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ijfaec:283769. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iiaaktr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.