The importance and determinants of market integration of small family farms in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

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.