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Sewage sludge/biosolids are by-wastes of municipal and industrial wastewater treatment. As sources of nutrients (C, N, P) they are widely used in intensive farming where large supplementation of organic matter to maintain fertility and enhance crop yields is needed. However, according to the report of European Commission published in 2010, only 39% of produced sewage sludge is recycled into agriculture in the European Union. This situation occurs mainly due to the fact, that the sewage sludge may contain a dangerous volume of different contaminants. For over decades, a great deal of attention has been focused on total concentration of few heavy metals and pathogenic bacteria Salmonella and Escherichia coli . The Sewage Sludge Directive (86/278/EEC) regulates the allowable limits of Zn, Cu, Ni, Pb, Cd, Cr and Hg and pathogens and allows for recovery of sludge on land under defined sanitary and environmentally sound conditions. In this paper, a review on quality of sewage sludge based on the publications after 2010 has been presented. Nowadays there are several papers focusing on new serious threats to human health and ecosystem occurring in sewage sludge – both chemicals (such as toxic trace elements – Se, Ag, Ti; nanoparticles; polyaromatic hydrocarbons; polychlorinated biphenyl; perfluorinated surfactants, polycyclic musks, siloxanes, pesticides, phenols, sweeteners, personal care products, pharmaceuticals, benzotriazoles) and biological traits ( Legionella, Yersinia, Escherichia coli O157:H7). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Th e main objective of the paper is to identify the impact of the Russian agrarian import ban on imports of certain agricultural products from Europe, Norway, Canada, the USA and Australia. Th e import ban particularly aff ected the import of competitive agricultural and foodstuff commodities into Russia. Th e ban was the result of the political and security tensions existing between the Russian Federation and the Western World, since early 2014. If we take into consideration the volume of the mutual trade and the importance of the mutual trade for each of the stakeholders mentioned above, it can be assumed that the main objectives of the Russian embargo was not to hurt the individual countries - especially the European Union, but rather to support domestic producers in order to achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency in basic agricultural products. It is evident that the objective of the applied import ban is to reduce the dependence of the Russian Federation on imports. Th is paper provides an analysis of the most aff ected product groups and products, especially in relation to the EU countries. Th e paper provides the following fi ndings: Th e result of the applied import ban was a significant reduction of the Russian agrarian import value. Th e import ban also improved the overall competitiveness of the Russian agricultural trade, whilst on the other hand, the competitiveness of some commodity groups was reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of agriculture was a priority for the member states of the European Union since its foundation, the Common Agricultural Policy being one of the most ancient politics at the European level. Agriculture is a sector which has a special economic and social importance for Romania. The paper aimed to identify the challenges of the agricultural companies from the perspective of labour productivity and funding access. In this respect, a series of economic indicators as the contribution of agriculture to GDP, the value of agricultural production, the evolution of reference interest rate, the evolution of credits for agriculture, were studied. the conclusion was that in order to improve labour productivity, it is needed a higher qualification of the occupied population in agriculture and the significant improvement of technological endowment of this sector and, from the point of view of funding access, it is necessary the continuous support of the companies which carry out their activity in agriculture, but not only by the diminution of difference interest rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural R&D has been identified as an important determinant of economic output in the agricultural sector. Surprisingly, in previous studies, spatial spillover associated with R&D spending in the agricultural sector has not been taken into account. This paper investigates the effects of spatial spillover of agricultural R&D on regional economic growth across EU-28 NUTS-II regions in the period 1995-2014. In particular, we extend previous studies by considering spillover in all sectors of agricultural R&D performance including business enterprise, government and higher education. The spatial Durbin panel data model is employed to estimate brooders effect including direct and indirect effects. Empirical results show a positive effect of agricultural R&D and its spatial spillover on regional growth in all performance sectors. Moreover, the impact of spatial spillover of agricultural R&D on regional growth depends on the performance of the R&D sectors; positive spillovers are stronger in the business enterprise sector. Finally, the interaction effect between the economic output of the agricultural sector of each region with that of its neighbours is significantly positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of the energy systems encompasses technological, societal, cultural, economic, and environmental aspects and calls for a more important role for citizens and communities. Bioenergy systems are subjects to legal, technical, environmental, economic, and social settings. At the regional level, bioenergy can incorporate agricultural traditions and offer waste-management solutions. Many are the stakeholders, with different perceptions and sometimes, conflictual interests. This study is a multidisciplinary, comprehensive review of recently published papers, on legal, technical, economic, and environmental layers of the bioenergy. It highlights the role of bioenergy in the transition to a Circular waste-based Bioeconomy. Three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social) were discussed and some thermodynamic (energy, exergy, emergy) and environmental indicators applied to bioenergy systems, were cited. Findings conclude that in the context of Circular Bioeconomy, global bioenergy sector may face challenges, due to the new demand for biomaterials from the same sources. Bioenergy sustainable pathways should be selected at the base of high efficiency, towards closing loops and in the concept of cascade and integrated biorefineries. At the regional level, bioenergy systems may be integrated with the cascade biorefinery models or can offer waste management solutions by stand-alone, tailor-made decentralized systems. In redesigning the bioenergy sector, local knowledge, public health, and community's resilience should not be neglected, while social-environmental benefits should be considered in addressing the viability of bioenergy plants. Social acceptance can be improved by a better understanding of the scientific and technical issues and by developing a broader consciousness of the planet and life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, agriculture is a dominant form of human use of land with agro-ecosystems covering about 40% of the terrestrial surface of the Earth. In this context, the European Union considers agriculture a key sector of the economy, recognizing, however, the related environmental implications. The aim of this paper is to examine the agricultural efficiency of EU countries, through a bootstrap-Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, an effective nonparametric method for evaluating the relative efficiency of the decision-making units. European datasets, suitable for policies and focused on the integration between agricultural productivity and ecosystem services (ESs) conservation, have been used to support planners and managers. Data related to five inputs (labor, land, capital, fertilizers, and irrigation area) and to one output connected to the economic value of agricultural production were collected from 1993 to 2013. The results show that the majority of EU countries have been experiencing increasing or decreasing returns to scale, highlighting their potential to increase their production efficiency by modifying their input use. Both for the output-oriented approach and the input-oriented approach, the majority of EU countries could better rationalize their input use obtaining more outputs and achieving production efficiency. DEA, a non-parametric methodology has been applied, using the concept of a reference group of efficient decision-making units that produce a similar output (peer group). Input-oriented and output-oriented DEA results and comparison indicate that most of the oldest EU countries have a more efficient and optimized crop production process in terms of resource savings and output maximization. This is probably due to the application of the Common Agricultural Policy. Therefore, in policy planning but also in management decisions, attention should always be paid not only to the maximization of agricultural production, but also to the environmental resource overexploitation. In this sense, best agricultural practices could represent a model to follow because they can maintain ESs without depressing production by using practices like conservation tillage, crop diversification, legume intensification and biological control perform giving the same results as intensive, high-input systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on agricultural production practices advance within international literature and new methods are proposed in order to assess the agricultural sustainability, either at farm or macro level. The present paper builds on these advancements and develops a synthetic Eco-(in)efficiency index by employing a directional distance function--data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. This index is used in order to assess the sustainability of the EU agricultural sector for the period 1999-2012 on a country level. Furthermore, Eco-(in)efficiency, together with the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are regressed on the gross domestic product (GDP) of EU countries, in order to check for any environmental Kuznets curve relationship existence. Results signify that efficiency improvements are possible, both towards output development and GHG emissions reduction. In addition, the potential of each country in adopting more sustainable production practices is not totally connected with its economic development, as Eco-(in)efficiency and GDP levels of EU countries seem to be linked with an N-Shaped curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable agriculture, food security, and welfare of the farmers require an integrated analysis of the performance of the agricultural sector. In this paper, we follow the energy-environment-economy framework and focus on decomposition of changes in the energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in agricultural sectors of the selected European Union (EU) countries. The research relies on country-level data from FAO and Eurostat describing economic activity, energy use, and GHG emission in the agricultural sectors of the European countries during 1995–2012. The main drivers (carbon factor of energy consumed in agriculture, energy intensity of agricultural production and growth in agricultural production) and their impacts on the energy-related GHG emissions in agriculture are analysed for selected countries. The Generalized Divisia Index is applied to decompose the changes in the energy-related GHG emissions. France, Latvia, and Belgium appeared as the only countries with increase in GHG emissions during 1995–2012. In the case of France, energy intensity went up along with increase in the scale of agricultural production. In Latvia and Belgium, an increase in carbon factor appeared as the major factor driving an increase in GHG emissions. The appropriate policies need to be employed in these countries seeking to reduce GHG emissions from energy consumption in agriculture. Improvements in energy efficiency appear to be a more feasible mean for ensuring further reductions in GHG emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutritional values of different foodstuffs have been examined in various studies on a number of occasions. However, so far, little attention has been paid to the legal aspects of introducing edible insects in the European Union. Yet, the rearing of this mini-livestock for food and feed has a potential of developing into a new agricultural sector, which is sustainable, unlike the breeding of the traditional livestock. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the legal background of authorizing edible insects in the European Union, taking into account the environmental impacts thereof. At present, the Member States are free to regulate this field, however, only until the transitional period established by the European Union (EU) rules has expired, since the EU wide regulation for authorizing edible insects is to be introduced as of 1st January 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a spatially explicit method for making regional estimates of the potential for biogas production from crop residues and manure, accounting for key technical, biochemical, environmental and economic constraints. Methods for making such estimates are important as biofuels from agricultural residues are receiving increasing policy support from the EU and major biogas producers, such as Germany and Italy, in response to concerns over unintended negative environmental and social impacts of conventional biofuels. This analysis comprises a spatially explicit estimate of crop residue and manure production for the EU at 250 m resolution, and a biogas production model accounting for local constraints such as the sustainable removal of residues, transportation of substrates, and the substrates’ biochemical suitability for anaerobic digestion. In our base scenario, the EU biogas production potential from crop residues and manure is about 0.7 EJ/year, nearly double the current EU production of biogas from agricultural substrates, most of which does not come from residues or manure. An extensive sensitivity analysis of the model shows that the potential could easily be 50% higher or lower, depending on the stringency of economic, technical and biochemical constraints. We find that the potential is particularly sensitive to constraints on the substrate mixtures’ carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and dry matter concentration. Hence, the potential to produce biogas from crop residues and manure in the EU depends to large extent on the possibility to overcome the challenges associated with these substrates, either by complementing them with suitable co-substrates (e.g. household waste and energy crops), or through further development of biogas technology (e.g. pretreatment of substrates and recirculation of effluent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Th e paper assesses the competitiveness of agriculture of 27 countries of the European Union in the years 2009- 2011. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon of competitiveness, a wide range of variables was adopted to evaluate it - including the relationship between the production factors, productivity, and the importance of agriculture in the international trade. Based on the evaluation criteria chosen for the competitiveness assessment and using the TOPSIS method, a synthetic measure of the studied phenomenon was constructed and then divided into four groups of countries similar in terms of the level of competitiveness of agriculture. Th e diff erence between the value of the synthetic measure of the country with the highest level of competitiveness of agriculture (Netherlands) and the country least competitive in this regard (Slovenia) was 3.5-fold. In addition to the Netherlands, there were classified also France, Germany, Denmark and Belgium in the fi rst group, so the countries with high levels of the socio-economic development. In the second group, there were seven countries: Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Cyprus, Austria, Ireland and Luxembourg. Th erefore, the fi rst two groups are formed by the countries belonging to the so-called "Old 15" (except Cyprus). Th e last two groups are formed primarily by the countries that joined the European Union in 2004 or later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aimed to evaluate the level of development of agriculture in 25 member states of the European Union (EU) in 2010-2013. The analysis was carried out using the development model proposed by Hellwig, which enabled the calculation of a single synthetic aggregate measure based on the characteristics of agriculture in respective countries. This made it possible to compare the analysed member states, thus providing the basis for allocating them to uniform groups characterised by a similar level of agricultural development. The results indicate that the Netherlands and Denmark are the countries with the highest level of agricultural development. The studies also show that the worst level of development in the ranking is presented primarily by the member states that acceded to the EU in 2004 and later, with agriculture in Slovakia and the Czech Republic being an exception. The diversification of the values of synthetic measure in respective member states points to a considerable diversification of agricultural development within the EU, which is determined both by the production potential and the effectiveness of its utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) was purposely established to “contribute to the promotion of sustainable rural development throughout the EU community”. This paper addresses the sustainability of the EAFRD from a triple bottom line perspective in a multiregional input-output model. This framework allows us to study both the trade relations within the EU target regions and also the relations of the EU with some other regions in the world. Additionally, the model allows us to determine the losses (leakages) or gains (boosts and feedbacks) of a wide range of effects. On the other hand, this framework allows a simultaneous consideration of socioeconomic and environmental fund effects to identify their causes and flows and to clarify and reallocate benefits and responsibilities across levels and regions. The estimation of direct and indirect impact effects in an EU country clarifies the following: a) how the leakages to other regions generate a final economic impact that redistributes the prior fund distribution; b) how relevant the countries' participation in global production chains are; and c) how the potential existence of an ecological unequal exchange is assessed. The main data originate from the WIOD database and the European Network for Rural Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to show that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be applied in agriculture as a sustainable development tool. This paper shows the connections between CSR and the Common Agricultural Policy; opinions on socially responsible agriculture expressed by EU citizens are mentioned, and the application of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility in agriculture is described. Both CSR and the Common Agricultural Policy are included in the Europe 2020 Strategy. Farmers should take the CSR concept into account when running their farms, a practice that would be welcomed by European citizens. Applying Corporate Social Responsibility in agriculture would contribute to improving the image of farmers as perceived by stakeholders, as well as bringing notable economic, social and environmental benefits. This article is based on the available literature and the results of European public opinion surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the relative technical efficiency of the agricultural sector in the European Union (EU) using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) during the period 2007-2011. The authors investigated efficiency using both the input and output-oriented models with the assumption of a variable return to scale. They looked for causes of inefficiency and made recommendations for inefficient agricultural sectors. The results show that, in average, the EU agricultural sectors performed efficiently, as evidenced by the relatively high value of the average input and output efficiency. The efficiency of the EU agricultural sectors had changed over the past few years, and in both models the efficiency has generally decreased over time. As the main source of inefficiency was labelled the input "total utilised agricultural area" and as the strength with a positive impact on efficiency, there was labelled the "crop output." By calculating the optimal values for the input and output variables for inefficient agricultural sectors, it has been found that for the efficient production of a given quantity of outputs, it was necessary to reduce the value of the in put "total labour" in average by 6.18%, the "total utilised agricultural area" in average by 14.45% and the "total assets" in average by 5.93%. In case of the output-oriented model for efficient use of a given quantity of inputs, the agricultural sectors should produce up to 111.85% of their crop output and 113.41% of their animal output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis and support structure of the beekeeping sector in the European Union countries was analyzed. The level of support for this sector of agriculture in the years to come increased and in the years 2017-2019 is 72 million EUR per year. The amount of support beekeeping depends mainly on the number of hives. The average value of support for bee colony in most countries ranges from 4.35 to 4.63 EUR per year. The amount of support expressed as the equivalent of beekeeping honey indicating little relevance of this action, since the value of the support is equal to the EU average of 0.65 kg multiflorous honey, that varies from 0.3 to 1.33 kg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]