Czech agriculture after the accession to the European Union - Impacts on the development of its multifunctionality

Abstract

The article presents the evaluation of multifunctionality of Czech agriculture and its individual farm categories in the period of 2003-2005. It compares the situation before and after the EU accession. The assessment is based on the set of indicators for the three elementary axes of multifunctionality: economic efficiency, relations to environment and relations to rural development. Applying the presented method of multi-criterion evaluation and during the period of 2003-2005 on average, the highest level of multifunctionality is found in the category of farms of physical persons with 101-300 ha (score 174) and the lowest level in the category of collective farms - cooperatives and joint stock companies (score about 115). However, compared with the pre-accession period, the collective farms show the highest growth of the score (by 17%) after the EU accession.