AGRICULTURAL ENTERPRISES IN BULGARIA: STRUCTURAL FEATURES AND DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to study and analyze the present state of agricultural farms in Bulgaria, and to provide directions for their development. The following tasks have been set in order to accomplish this goal: to establish the main difficulties in farm functioning; to discover the factors with an impact on their development; to offer adequate measures for sustainable growth. The study encompasses the period from the beginning of the transition to market economy in the 1990s to the end of the first programme period after Bulgaria’s accession to the EU. The sources of information used in the analysis include data from national statistics, agrarian reports from the Ministry of Healthcare and Food, literature by other authors, as well as our own research. Main conclusions: the agricultural reform in Bulgaria in the 1990s led to establishing a production structure of private agriculture farms; the latter is strongly polarized – with a large number of small size and few large size farms. Part of the small farms is maintained by people who have no other employment opportunities. Many of them start working with limited production resources and knowledge, they have an insufficient access to loans and professional training. These and several other factors obstruct successful farm functioning and decrease production results. Bulgaria’s accession to the EU deepened the polarization between small and big agricultural farms. This process was also affected by the EU Common Agriculture Policy, and most of all - the single payment scheme per unit of used land area. To stimulate the growth and development of family agriculture business in Bulgaria, the state needs to provide special conditions: young people will require professional entrepreneurship culture, they must acquire experience in developing successful agricultural farms at home and abroad; cooperation with research institutions is needed, as well as preferential crediting, introduction of “green” production technologies, etc.

Keywords

• agricultural farms
• size-based differentiation
• standard output indicator
• analysis
• development