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Hrabrin Bashev
Why and How to Evaluate the "New" Governance Sustainability of Agriculture
Summary:
In Bulgaria, like in many other countries, there is practicaly no studies on the governance sustainability of agriculture and its importance for overall agricultural development. This study tries to fill the gap and suggesrs a holistic framework for understanding and assessing the governance sustainability of Bulgarian agriculture. The new approach is “tested” in a large-scale study to assess the governance sustainability of Bulgarian agriculture at national, sectoral, regional, ecosystem and farm levels.
It is proved that it is important to include the "missing" Governance Pillar in the assessment of the integral sustainability of agriculture and the sustainability of agricultural systems of different types. The multi-principal, multi-criteria and multi-indicator assessment of the governance sustainability of Bulgarian agriculture found out that the overall sustainability is at a “good” but close to the “satisfactory” level. In addition, there is a significant differentiation of the levels of integral governance sustainability of the different types of agro-systems in the country. Moreover, the individual indicators with the highest and lowest sustainability values determine the “critical” factors enhancing and deteriorating the particular and integral governance sustainability of the evaluated agro-system.
Given the importance of holistic assessments of this type for improving agricultural sustainability in general, and the governance sustainability of agriculture in particular, they should be expanded and their accuracy and representativeness improved. The later requires increasing precision by increasing the surveyed farms and stakeholders, and using more "objective" data from surveys, statistics, professional experts in the field, etc.
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Hrabrin Bashev
To the Question of Economic Study of Agrarian Contracts
Summary:
Arround the globe, a huge number of theoretical and empirical studies and publications related to agrarian contracts of various types have been made. In Bulgaria, the studies of economic contracts in general, and of agrarian contracts in particular, are incidental, with individual researchers applying "their own" definitions and methodologies, which are often contradictory, non-comprehensive and highly debatable. The article attempts to answer several important academic and practical questions: what is an economic contract, what is the difference of the economic approach compared to other (legal, sociological, etc.) approaches to the study of contracts, what is the role of economic contracts in agrarian governance, why there is such a huge variety of contracts used by agents, etc. The achievements of the interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics are adapted and a holistic framework for the economic understanding and analysis of agrarian contracts and contractual relations in agriculture is presented. The system of agrarian contracts is seen as a complex, networked and multi-layered system, involving a variety of agrarian and non-agrarian Agents, who govern their relations and activities through various contractual Means (types of contracts), participating in the agrarian contractual Process, as a result of which in each particular time period in a given country, region, sub-sector, type of farming, agro-ecosystem, etc. dominates a certain contractual and governance Order. Like the economic analysis of the system of agrarian governance, the holistic analysis of the system of economic contracts is to apply an A-M-P-O approach, which includes an analysis of all its elements - Agents, Means, Process, and Order. The article offers an adequate economic definition of agrarian contracts and characterization of their place in the system of agrarian governance as bilateral or multilateral agreements related to agricultural production and services. After that, an economic characterization of the agents participating in the contractual relations is made, paying particular attention to their bounded rationality and tendency to opportunism. These two characteristics related to "human nature" are the reason for the existence of transaction costs and the need to choose an effective governing (contractual) form to increase the "rationality" of agents and protect against possible opportunism in their relationships.
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Hrabrin Bashev
Governance Modes for Supply gf Agro-Ecosystem Services by Agricultural Farms in Bulgaria
Summary:
Despite growing environmental issues, and increasing public and private interests, scientific studies on the management of agroecosystem services are at the beginning stage. This article incorporates the interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics framework, and identifies and assesses diverse private, market, collective and public modes of management of ecosystem services applied by the Bulgarian farms. The study has found out that farms of the country use a great variety of private, market, collective and public modes of governance of farm activity related to agroecosystem services. There is significant differentiation of employed managerial forms depending on the type of ecosystem services and specialization of agricultural holdings. Management of agroecosystem services is associated with a considerable increase in the production and transaction costs of participating farms as well as big socio-economic and environmental effects for holdings and other parties. Factors that mostly stimulate the activity of Bulgarian producers for protection of agro-ecosystems and their services are participation in public support programs, access to farmers' advice, professional training, available information and innovation, received direct subsidies, personal conviction and satisfaction, positive experience of others, long-term and immediate benefits for the farm, and integration with suppliers, buyers and processors. Suggested holistic framework for analysing the system of management of agro-ecosystem services is to be extended and improved, and widely and periodically applied in the future.