The agricultural sector ensures food security and is a major source of employment, income, and economic activity in rural areas. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) considers that family farms are the key to a sustainable future in Europe and Central Asia. In Romania, small farms represent the pillar on which Romanian society has been developed. Although the trend has been a reduction in the number of small farms and an increase in the number of large farms, the Government of Romania understands the importance of small farms and therefore supports them through policies involving direct payments, rural development instruments, special initiatives, and loans and outstanding obligations, among others, which focus on increasing their economic performance. The aim of our research was to determine the relationship between farmers’ motivation, their job satisfaction, and the farm economic performance in the case of small Romanian farms. The research sample consisted of 900 small farms (utilized agricultural area (UAA): under 20 ha; standard output (SO): under EUR 15,000). The data obtained after applying the questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 and Amos 24.0. For the exploratory factor analysis, values of Bartlett’s test of sphericity, the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were calculated for each dimension of the proposed model. The hypothesis that motivation, job satisfaction, and farm economic performance directly and positively influence each other was confirmed. An important finding was that the correlation coefficient between farmers’ motivation and farm economic performance was ρ = 0.78, while that for the relation between farmers’ job satisfaction and farm economic performance was ρ = 0.53, which was similar to the correlation coefficient calculated for the relationship between farmers’ motivation and farmers’ job satisfaction. This result allows us to conclude that the influence of farmers’ motivation factors on farm economic performance is stronger than the influence of job satisfaction in the case of Romanian farmers on small farms. This might explain why, although work in agriculture is considered to be worse than an office job and the people that work in agriculture are sometimes stigmatized and receive lower incomes, there are still very strong motivators for Romanian farmers to continue their work in agriculture. This is proven by the fact that Romania has the highest number of small farms in Europe, and this number is not decreasing.

Economic overview of the distribution channels used by Eastern European small farms for their agricultural products | Vladimir Ristanovic, Aleksandra Tošović-Stevanović, Silvia Maican, Andreea Muntean | Agricultural Journals

One of the issues determining the economic situation of farms is the scope of their market integration. It can be therefore assumed that higher market integration leads to an improvement in the economic performance of households. The article has two aims. The first is to indicate the relationship between the degree of market integration of small-scale family farms and their economic condition. The second objective is to discover the determinants of the market integration of farms. The explanatory variables include economic (production value, total farm area, labour input, specialization of production) and demographic (farmer age, education level) factors. The novelty of our paper lies in in depth comparative analysis based on primary data from questionnaire surveys taken in 2018 and 2019 in five countries of Central and Eastern Europe: Serbia, Moldova, Lithuania Romania, and Poland. The results indicate is the existence of a statistically significant positive correlation between the degree of market integration and economic performance. Factors that favorably influence the level of market connection include the scale of production, specialization and, to some extent, level of farmowner’s education. The remaining variables are inconclusive or not statistically significant.

Economic sustainability plays an important role in shaping conditions for economic growth and social development. The importance of answering the question about the level of sustainability of family farms results from the fact that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, apart from exceptions (e.g., the Czech Republic and Slovakia), are characterized by a fragmented agrarian structure. Hence, the main goal of this article was to answer two questions: (1) whether the countries of Central and Eastern Europe differ in the level of economic sustainability of small family farms; and (2) whether the same socioeconomic factors impact similarly on the level of economic sustainability of small family farms from countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The study was based on surveys conducted in small family farms: in 2018 from Poland (672 farms) and in 2019 in four other countries (Lithuania; 999 farms, Romania; 834 farms, Serbia; 523 farms, Moldova; 530 farms). The publication includes a critical analysis of the literature, structure analysis and correlation analysis. The results show the occurrence of large differences between the economic sustainability of small family farms from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The research indicates that the larger the area of a small-scale family farm, the greater its economic sustainability. The productivity of these farms increases with their economic sustainability. The results also prove a negative relationship between the age of the farmer and the economic sustainability of their farm in all analysed countries. These trends were found in all analysed countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The results of the analyses support the conclusion that agricultural policy instruments aimed at increasing the economic sustainability of small family farms should lead to: land consolidation, a decrease in the age of farm owners through generational changes, and a decrease in employment in agriculture, which would lead to a reduction in labour input in the agricultural sector.

Food security has a special relevance in nowadays economies, due to the current crisis, characterized by multiple layers on a social, political, economic, and individual biological level. The present study aims to identify relevant aspects of food insecurity for consumers in rural Romania and the main factors that significantly influence it (food availability, food access, and food consumption). The data were collected from a sample of 875 consumers from rural areas in Romania. The results show that food insecurity is perceived by the consumers of Romanian rural households as being strongly influenced by food availability, but less influenced by food consumption and access. The results have an essential relevance in the development of agri-food marketing strategies and public policies in the field of sustainable development.