Competitiveness Level of Bulgarian Farms

Hrabrin Bachev, Nina Koteva

Abstract: Despite its importance and continuing debates, there is still no consensus on what is the competitiveness of farms, how to measure the competitiveness of different organizations in agriculture, what is the absolute and comparative competitiveness of different types of farms, which are the critical factors for increasing the competitiveness at the current stage of development, etc. The article tries to fill the existing gap by applying a holistic approach and assessing the competi-tiveness of farms as a whole and with different specializations in the country. The multi-criteria assessment found that the level of competitiveness of Bulgarian farms is at a good level, with low adaptive potential and economic efficiency to the greatest extent contributing to lower competitiveness. More than a third of all farms in the country have a low level of competitiveness. The most competitive are the farms in the bee sector, followed by field crops, mixed animal husbandry and mixed crop production, and the lowest for farms specializing in grazing livestock. The proposed approach should be improved and applied more widely and periodically, increasing accuracy and representativeness. The latter requires close cooperation with producer organizations, advisory service and other stakeholders, and improvement of the agricultural information collection system in the country.

Keywords: agricultural holdings; Bulgaria; competitiveness

Date published: 2022-01-19