Assessment of Sustainable Production in rural areas

This paper presents a model for sustainable planning and optimization of agricultural production. The model is a mathematical programming model, based on multicriteria techniques, and is used as a tool for the analysis and simulation of agricultural production plans, as well as for the study of impacts of the various policies in agriculture. The model can achieve the optimum production plan of an agricultural region combining in one utility function different conflicting criteria as the maximization of gross margin and the minimization of fertilizers used, under a set of constraints for land, labour, available capital, common agricultural policy etc. The proposed model was applied to the region of Thessaly, in central Greece. In all prefectures, the optimum production plan achieves greater gross return, les fertilizers use, and less irrigated water use than the existent production plan

Classification of rural areas in Europe using social sustainability indicators

Social sustainability is “one of the three legs of the sustainability stool” (the other two are environmental and economic. There is limited literature that focuses on social sustainability to the extent that a comprehensive study of this concept is still missing. As a result, there have been very few attempts to define social sustainability as an independent dimension of sustainable development. Social sustainability is related to social capital, social inclusion, social exclusion and social cohesion in rural economies, terms that are measured by relevant social sustainability indicators. This paper aims to measure these indicators and to compare them. In order to measure these indicators, a household survey carried out in the context of the research project CAP-IRE. This survey included eleven case study areas in nine case study areas of the European Union. From the results of this survey we measured a set of economic and social sustainability indicators. We have selected the main social sustainability indicators on which we based on to proceed to the ranking of the eleven European rural areas

A taxonomy survey of decision support systems in agriculture

This paper presents the results of a research concerning the type, category and fields of applications of Decision Support Systems (DSS) and their contribution to decision-making in agriculture, mainly in the fields of planning and management of farms, farm regions and agricultural resources. More specifically, the paper includes a taxonomy survey that has been based on an analysis of all published works on applications of DSS from 1987 to 2001, as well as a categorized presentation of these applications. The relevant classification of DSS is made by treating subject (theoretical DSS or applicative), the source of publication (proceedings, scientific journal or dissertation), the type of DSS (Decision Support System, Expert System or Knowledge Based DSS), the operational research model that each one DSS uses, the operational field (Diagnostic Forecasting, Advisory, Control, Educational Informational, Operational), the category of decisions (Strategic or Tactic planning decision) and the year of application. The basic concepts and characteristics of DSSs along with the important role that they play in the decision-making process in agriculture, are also described at the beginning of this paper

INFLUENCE OF CAP ON SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN GREEK AND BULGARIAN RURAL AREAS

This paper aims to make a comparison between Greek and Bulgarian rural areas, in terms of social sustainability indicators. Social sustainability is related to social capital, social inclusion, social exclusion and social cohesion in rural economies, terms that can be measured by relevant social indicators. The paper focuses on the effects of farm household behaviour on social sustainability in regard to changes in employment, gender, migration and social capital. To this end two case study areas were selected; Macedonia and Thrace in Greece and South east Planning Region in Bulgaria. The data were collected by a survey carried out in the context of the European FP7 project entitled CAP-IRE (Assessing the multiple Impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy on Rural Economies). The survey included eleven case study areas in nine case study areas of the European Union. The paper also compares the results from the Greek and Bulgarian case study areas with the average results of the eleven European case study areas

A taxonomy survey of decision support systems in agriculture

This paper presents the results of a research concerning the type, category and fields of applications of Decision Support Systems (DSS) and their contribution to decision-making in agriculture, mainly in the fields of planning and management of farms, farm regions and agricultural resources. More specifically, the paper includes a taxonomy survey that has been based on an analysis of all published works on applications of DSS from 1987 to 2001, as well as a categorized presentation of these applications. The relevant classification of DSS is made by treating subject (theoretical DSS or applicative), the source of publication (proceedings, scientific journal or dissertation), the type of DSS (Decision Support System, Expert System or Knowledge Based DSS), the operational research model that each one DSS uses, the operational field (Diagnostic–Forecasting, Advisory, Control, Educational–Informational, Operational), the category of decisions (Strategic or Tactic planning decision) and the year of application. The basic concepts and characteristics of DSSs along with the important role that they play in the decision-making process in agriculture, are also described at the beginning of this paper.Risk and Uncertainty,