Contract number

P4-0022

Department:

Department of Animal Science

Type of project

Research Programmes/Infrastructural Centres

Type of project

Research Programme

Role

Lead

Duration

01.01.2018 - 31.12.2023

ARRS FTE value

0.61 FTE

Total

1.04 FTE

Project manager at BF

Erjavec Emil

P4-0022 Fotografija 1.gifP4-0022 Fotografija 2.gifP4-0022 Fotografija 3.gif

The group, led by Prof. Dr. Emil Erjavec, brings together twelve agricultural economists from four research institutions (7 researchers from the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, 2 from the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences of the University of Maribor, 2 from the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia and 1 from the Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing). The group integrates knowledge from various scientific disciplines (economics, agriculture, ecology, social sciences) and forms the national research core for tackling current economic challenges in agriculture and natural resource management at the micro and macro level.

The programme is directed towards the development of theoretical concepts and methodical tools in  various research fields: economics and operational research of agricultural holdings; research of competitive aspects of agri-food and other value chains based on agricultural biomass;; environmental and ecological economics, and especially agricultural policy and political economy of agriculture;.

The programme also brings together the leading national experts on the study and analysis of agricultural policy. Over the past 25 years, members of the group have contributed impact assessments and background documents to support decision making in some of the key national decisions in agriculture. Members of the group regularly present their findings to governmental and non-governmental organizations. Their expertise is also sought in commissioned research for international clients, such as the European Commission, OECD, FAO and the European Parliament. In some research fields (sector modelling, agricultural policy analysis, rural development and ecosystem services), the group represents an reference point for this part of Europe, which is reflected in frequent invitations to participate in EU projects as well as successful applications and implementation of projects (12 projects under various EU framework programmes since 2002).

Among the most important publications from the past four years, we highlight works on the following topics (of group members from the Biotechnical Faculty): factors and discourses of reforms and the scope of disciplinary research of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (Erjavec and Lovec, 2017); preferences regarding recreation in urban forests (Japelj et al., 2016); complementarity of socio-economic and emergy analysis of different milk production systems (Jaklič et al., 2014); stakeholder expectations regarding agri-environmental measures (Glumac et al., 2017); developing an innovative method for assessing interactions between European agricultural policy and climate change (Erjavec et al., 2017); a multi-criteria mathematical model designed to support decision-making on the agricultural holding (Žgajnar and Kavčič 2016); the apparent greening (‘greenwashing’) of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2013, analysed using discourse analysis (Erjavec K. and Erjavec E., 2015); about the regional normalization factors of LCA analysis using the machine learning approach (Slapnik et al., 2015); on the analysis of income risk in agriculture using a simulation model based on data from farms submitting subsidy applications (Žgajnar, 2017).