The “forth”Pillar of Sustainability of Bulgarian Agriculture

BACHEV, Hrabrin (hrabrin.bachev@gmail.com)

Professor at the Institute of Agricultural Economics, Sofia, Bulgaria. Coordinator at the Bulgaria-China Research Center for Agrarian and Rural Development - https://china-bg-center.alle.bg/ PhD in Economics, Agricultural Academy, Bulgaria.Visiting research and teaching in some of the leading European, American and Japanese academic centers; among them University of Missouri in the USA, University of Toronto in Canada, Kyoto University, Kyushu University, and Tohoku University in Japan, London University in the UK, Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, INRA-Montpellier in France, Central European University in Hungary, UNWE in Bulgaria, etc.

Professor Bachev has more than 300 academic papers, as well as contributions to books and books in around 50 countries around the world. Incorporating interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Cost Economics into agrarian, food and rural sector to analyze diverse modes of governance, and factors and prospects of institutional and organizational modernization. Recent research focusing on governance and assessment of agrarian and rural sustainability; analysis of agrarian and rural institutions, organizations and contracts; environmental, risk and food chain management; assessment of impacts of EU and national policies; management of agrarian research and innovation, etc.

Personal Website: http://hrabrin-bachev.my.contact.bg/ 

Research Overview 

The goal of this presentation is to assess the importance and level of the “forth” pillar of agrarian sustainability in Bulgaria. It suggests a specific for the contemporary conditions of Bulgarian agriculture holistic framework for assessing governance and integral sustainability, including a system of adequate principles, criteria, indicators, and reference values. Results of a “large scale” testing of the elaborated novel framework are presented giving insights on governance sustainability of the country’s agriculture at national, sub-sectoral, and regional levels.  

The study has proved that it is important to include the “missing” Governance pillar in the assessment of the Integral sustainability of agriculture and agro-systems of various types. Multi-dimensional assessment of governance sustainability of the country’s agriculture indicates that it is at a Good but very close to the Satisfactory level. Most critical for increasing governance sustainability at the current stage is progressive improvements in farmer’s participation in decision-making, agrarian administration efficiency, administrative services digitalization, a possibility for lands extension, management board external control, level of informal system efficiency, subsidies in income, the extent of contract enforcement, acceptability of legal payments, and lands concentration.

There is considerable differentiation in the level of governance sustainability of individual subsectors of agriculture as the highest one is demonstrated by the mix livestock, vegetables, flowers, and mushrooms, and mix crop-livestock productions, while the lowest is in the field and mix crops.   Similarly, the principles of good governance are the best applied in the North-Central and Northeast agro-regions, and only satisfactorily in the South-East and South-Central agro-regions of the country.Having in mind the importance of holistic assessments of this kind for improving (management of) agrarian sustainability in general, and governance sustainability in particular, they are to be expended and their precision increased.

(Keywords: governance, sustainability, assessment, agro-systems, Bulgaria)