Farm income is a policy-relevant proxy for farm households' viability. Volatile income levels reduce the well-being of farmers and decrease their incentives to produce, invest, and innovate. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the associations between agricultural subsidies, farm characteristics, and the stability of farm income, along with their relative importance, by applying a linear fixed-effects model to the Estonian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) sample. Building on previous analyses, we show that a significant portion of agricultural subsidies in gross farm income is positively associated with income instability. Our estimates suggest that financial immobility is positively correlated with income stability. This indicates that farm-specific grants can provide opportunities to invest while also alleviating budget constraints for indebted farms. After controlling for various farm characteristics, we find that income becomes more stable as farmers age, while income volatility associated with agricultural production is positively linked to rising land prices.

In this study, a procedure for selecting the optimal heat-accumulating material based on phase transitions for the economical maintenance of poultry farms by applying ANOVA to complex solid bodies’ thermodynamic parameters is described. The relevance of the topic is due to its importance for the development of an energy-saving technology based on the release or absorption of significant heat during the crystallization or melting of materials. The applicability of one-way ANOVA for the selection of the optimal material with a specific functional purpose was demonstrated. As result, the best composition for maintaining a normal temperature regime in poultry farms that could meet all the requirements imposed on heat-storage materials was determined. It was found that magnesium sulphate heptahydrate is such a material.

The study aims to analyse the impact of application of chemical inputs like fertilisers or crop protection products on farm crop yield productivity in Estonian and Slovenian agriculture. We combined the propensity score matching (PSM) method with an inverse probability weighted regression (IPWRA) model to derive treatment effects of the adoption of these critical inputs using Farm Accountancy Data Network data. Results exhibit consistency across estimation techniques. Estimates of both IPWRA and PSM models showed that adoption of at least one of the chemical inputs decreases volatility of crop yield output and downside risk. The results are more robust for Estonian than for Slovenian farms suggesting on possible impacts of other exogenous factors such as climate change on mitigating the crop yield downside risk.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the determinants of investment decisions of Estonian farms after the transition to market economy and accession to the European Union (EU), in the period 2006–2019.Design/methodology/approach: The paper employs Estonian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) individual farm-level data from the period 2006–2019, and standard and augmented accelerator investment models. Generalised methods of moments (GMM) and bias-corrected least-squares dummy variables (LSDVC) regressions were used to estimate parameters of these models.Findings: In the considered period, farm investments were positively affected by sales growth, investment subsidies and the cash flow. Decomposition of cash flow into volatile, market income related part, and more stable, farm subsidies related part indicated that investments do not depend on market income part of cash flow. Instead, the stable part of the cash flow (farm subsidies) had a significant and positive effect on investments. This suggests that credit rationing could be present in the EU agriculture, and it depends on the farm subsidies not market income of farms.Originality/value: Despite the wealth of literature on the investment behaviour of farmers, this article is the first attempt to decompose farm cash flow into stable (farm subsidies) and volatile (market income) parts to explain the role of subsidies as a part of cash flow in credit rationing.

The thermodynamic parameters (entropy, enthalpy, interfacial surface energy) are analyzed for the substitutional solid solutions that solidify from liquid solutions of binary systems characterized by continuous solubility. Equations determining the concentrational dependences of these parameters, the critical sizes of nuclei, and their formation energies are obtained.

The laws of changing the presolidification supercooling of bismuth drops during continuous thermal cycling were studied by thermal analysis in the temperature–time coordinates. A sawtooth...