One can observe the sustainability of traditional food products (TFPs) consumption in terms of their market, production, and technical characteristics. These characteristics must be acknowledged by the management section of a catering facility responsible for purchasing and consuming these products. Consequently, this research was conducted among the management of catering facilities (chefs, managers, and owners) in Vojvodina (northern region of Serbia) from 300 different facilities. The research was conducted using a questionnaire. The data acquired were statistically processed using the non-parametric Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests and presented in this paper. Special attention was given to differences in perceiving the characteristics of TFP of Vojvodina (TASQ) as seen from the socio-demographic aspects of the respondents and the characteristics of catering facilities. The research deduced that the sensory quality of a product, menu diversity, freshness, local production, price, and seasonality are the prominent characteristics that affect the TFP’s choice of purchase and consumption. The least essential characteristics are organic production and brand. The differences in perception of the characteristics were based on the respondent’s age, education level, and working position, as well as catering offer (domestic, national, international, and combined) and the location of a catering facility (urban/rural).
The imperative of sustainable agricultural development, coupled with growing challenges related to climate change reaffirms the importance of manure and increases the demand for it. Due to the underdeveloped market for manure, there is a problem in assessing its economic value, requiring appropriate research on this topic. Thus, this research aimed to assess the manure’s economic value using the method of equivalent substitution. For this purpose, the chemical composition of manure was determined by standard agrochemical analyses concerning the content of the most important mineral elements—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P2O5), and potassium (K2O). These elements ranged from 0.49–0.60%, 0.15–1.10%, and 0.70–1.07%, respectively, and the content of organic matter ranging from 20.88 to 27.00%. Subsequently, the cost of equivalent substitution was calculated taking into account market prices for commercial fertilizers and organic matter based on the cost of an adequate quantity of white mustard—Sinapis alba L. fresh mass. The average cost of equivalent substitution for manure was determined to be 28.60 USD/t. The results of the applied t-test indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between the market prices of beef manure and the calculated prices of its substitution (t = −1.4069; df = 12; p = 0.1848), which implies that white mustard green manure could replace the deficit in animal-derived manure. Since both animal and green manures unambiguously should be prioritized over chemical fertilizers, future studies will reveal which other crops are applicable for further increments of green manure to make up for insufficient availability of animal manure.
Numerous concerns associated with the use of synthetic pesticides have led to important initiatives aimed at ensuring eco-friendly practices in pest and disease control. Third-generation pesticides, biopesticides, have become a key factor in those efforts, capturing the attention of researchers worldwide. To evaluate trends in biopesticide research over the past three decades, a bibliometric analysis was performed on bibliographic data sourced from the Web of Science database. This analysis included metrics such as publication dynamics, types of documents, and assessments of research fields and categories. Co-authorship, citation, and co-occurrence networks were visualized using VOSviewer software to identify collaboration patterns, influential publications, emerging topics, and interdisciplinary connections. A total of 5054 publications on the topic of ‘biopesticide’ were found (1994–2024), nearly half of which were published in the last five years. Out of 136 contributing countries, researchers from the USA, People’s Republic of China, and India produced the most publications, while a total of 19,676 authors contributed to at least one paper throughout the entire examined period. The identification of the most frequently used keywords highlighted significant topics within biopesticide-related publications, from the earliest to the most recent, aiding in our understanding of the developmental trajectory and opportunities for future exploration.
Farms operating under more or less similar environmental and socio-economic conditions often reflect significant differences in production and economic results they achieve. Such differences are most commonly attributed to: biological factors, the level of specialization, the intensity of production, the size of farms and/or implemented production practice, etc. It is considered that the differences in achieved results, that is, the success of a farm can be, to a large extent, explained by variations in farmers' management capacities. Management capacities can be defined as possession of appropriate personal characteristics and capabilities of farmers (managers) to cope with specific problems and opportunities at the right time and in the right way. With the changes taking place within the modern agricultural production, it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain competitive advantages, thus the farmers are progressively confronted with the requirements for certain management capacities which will enable them to take advantage of the existing conditions in the best possible way, i.e. to choose and implement the optimal production practice. As the management capacities are rarely explicitly defined and quantified, particularly when it comes to agricultural producers, the aim of this study is to provide a review of the previous research in this field while highlighting the significance of these issues.
1 January 2020 in Journal on Processing and Energy in Agriculture
The subject of this research is the financial position of mill companies in Vojvodina. The specific aim of the research is to analyze the is to compare the applied models for the analysis of the financial position. The basis of the analysis are the financial reports of the observed companies in the period from 2015 to 2019. The analysis of the financial position was performed using two models: Altman's Z-score model and Kralicek's Quick test model. These models use standard financial ratio indicators to assess the risk of bankruptcy of companies, i.e. their financial stability and profitability. The obtained results suggest that the company MLINTEST stood out as the most successful company and that the company KIKINDSKI MLIN stood out as the company with the worst financial position. Both models gave similar results, and their further use is recommended when analyzing the financial position of mill companies in Vojvodina financial position, i.e. to assess the risk of bankruptcy of medium-sized mill companies in Vojvodina. The general aim of the research.
Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crops in Serbia. The average annual production of tomato has been about 174,000 tones. The topic of this research paper is the analysis of the changes and the future tendencies of the price parameters of tomato in Serbia, with the aim to forecast the real, absolute and relative (the parity with wheat) tomato price, i.e. to forecast the economic conditions for the production. The analysis of the time series (1994-2010) has been done by means of descriptive statistics, and the suitable ARIMA models were used for the forecast (2011-2015). The average real tomato price in the period 1994-2010 was 0.17 EUR/kg, and the average parity price for tomato/wheat was 1.5. The tendencies for the real growth of tomato price as well as the increase in the parity price with wheat were noticed during the analyzed period. A further real growth of tomato price and the growth of the parity with wheat have been predicted for the forecast period. This means that both absolute and relative price conditions in tomato production have been improving. The predicted tomato price in 2015 is 0.22 EUR/kg, and the parity price with wheat is 2.88, which is considerably higher than the average in the observed time period. The models for the forecast indicated that the previous year's tomato price, i.e. parity, has a considerable influence over the formation of tomato price and the establishing of the parity with wheat.