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Soil-water practice is essential for farm sustainability, thereby establishing the reference level for agricultural policy of the European Union (EU). This paper focuses on the critical gap in the knowledge surrounding comparison of soil-water effects of Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) and carbon farming. We aim to interrogate the tasks assigned to soil-water standards during the 2005–2020 timeframe and identify soil-water effects under selected soil-water GAEC topics. The farm-level and landscape-scale effects were weighed for each standard. The investigation included an extensive meta-review of documents that featured scientific work on sustainable practice. In each GAEC document, soil-water sustainability was weighed vis-a-vis carbon farming. Our main finding was that the identification of soil-water effects within GAEC was addressed both at farm-enterprise level (E) and landscape scale (L). This identification was very similar among the sampled Member States (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). A small differentiation was detected in how exact the guidance under each standard was in each of these Member States, and hence how the prioritization was scored, ranging from 1, most influential, to 5, least influential. The scores that prevailed were 2.5–5 on the part of the scoring instrument. Carbon farming is a welcome addition to the corpus of good farming practice and is complementary to GAEC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to create a typology of consumers based on the consumption of food products and non-alcoholic beverages for two countries. The research was conducted among non-randomized respondents representing 900 Polish and 300 Slovakian households. The Polish part of the study was carried out in the Silesian and Mazovian provinces. The Slovakian part of the study was carried out in the whole country. To identify four groups of consumers, the paper used the clustering of objects method, especially the Two-Step method: Ward (hierarchical) cluster analysis and non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis. The authors represent the difference in the results achieved between types of consumers. Poles and Slovakians similarly perceive the financial status of their households and the attention paid to food price when buying it. However, there is a significant difference in food consumption. When eating, Slovaks are influenced more by vegetarian and vegan fashion trends and emotional experience than price. On the contrary, Poles are more interested in the health aspect of the food consumed and its quantity when emphasizing the price, which results from being less financially satisfied. The results of the research provide information about changes in consumer attitudes in the researched area and their thinking about their consumption, respectively lifestyle, and illustrate some trends in consumer behavior for the current and post-COVID-19 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the development of agricultural technology has been focused on achieving higher reliability and quality of work. The aim of the presented paper was to examine the possibilities of evaluating the quality of work of wide-area irrigation machinery by monitoring the coefficients of uniformity and non-uniformity of irrigation. The object of the research was pivot irrigation machinery equipped with sprinklers with a total length from 230 to 540 m. The commonly applied quality of work parameter for wide-range irrigators is the irrigation uniformity coefficient according to Heermann and Hein CUH. Work quality evaluations were also carried out through other parameters applicable in practice, such as irrigation uniformity coefficients calculated according to Christiansen CU, Wilcox and Swailes Cws, and our introduced parameters, the coefficient ar (derived from the degree of unevenness according to Oehler) and the degree of uniformity γr (derived from the degree of non-uniformity according to Voight). Other applied parameters for determining the quality of work of wide-range irrigation machinery were the coefficients of irrigation uniformity according to Hart and Reynolds CUhr, further according to Criddle CUcr and subsequently according to Beale and Howell CUbr. Next, the parameters of the non-uniformity coefficient according to Oehler a, the coefficient of variation according to Stefanelli Cv, the degree of non-uniformity according to Voigt γ and the degree of non-uniformity according to Hofmeister Ef were evaluated. Field tests were performed during the growing season of cultivated crops (potatoes, corn and sugar beet) in the village of Trakovice (agricultural enterprise SLOV-MART, southwest of the Slovakia) and in the district of Piešťany (Agrobiop, joint stock company). During the research, the inlet operating parameters (speed stage, inlet pressure, irrigation dose), technical parameters (number of sprayers, total length, number of chassis) and weather conditions (wind speed and temperature) were recorded. The obtained results were examined by one-way ANOVA analysis depending on the observed coefficient or input conditions and subsequently verified by Tukey and Duncan tests as needed. Irrigation uniformity values ranged from 67.58% (Cws) to 95.88% (CUbh) depending on the input conditions. Irrigation non-uniformity values ranged from 8.58 (a, Ef) to 32.42% (Cv). The results indicate a statistically significant effect of the site of interest and thus the impact of particular field conditions (p < 0.05). When evaluating the application of different coefficients of irrigation uniformity, the results showed a statistically significant effect only in the first test (p = 0.03, p < 0.05). During further repeated measurements, the quality of work increased due to the performed inspection of all sprayers and the reduction in the influence of the wind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]