Agricultural Economics Department

Agricultural Economics Department belongs to the smaller departments of the Institute as in the past ten years it employed six to seven researchers and one technician. The program of the Department was formed already at the beginning of the seventies and has remained practically unchanged until present. The research and the professional work are entwined and the major fields of work are the following:

In the past few years, the majority of the research work was devoted primarily to development of simulation models for agriculture. On the basis of these models costs of particular major agricultural products are evaluated and applied for the estimation of income change in agriculture. Another important field of work is the monitoring of the general condition and development of agriculture and, in the past few years, co-operation in the investigations of the impact of European integration process on the Slovene agriculture (European Union, CEFTA).

In frame of the regional studies special attention is paid to areas with aggravated conditions for agricultural production and to questions related to environment (agriculture on water protected areas, farm typology, overgrowing of agricultural land etc.).

The work of the Agricultural Economics Department has been closely connected, on the research as well as on the professional level, with the Slovene agricultural area and its current agricultural economical and political problems while the international co-operation has been getting stronger lately.