Farming Standards as a Catalyst for Food Export: Middle-Income European Countries Case Study
Farming Standards as a Catalyst for Food Export: Middle-Income European Countries Case Study

Summary/Abstract: IFA GLOBALG.A.P. is a leading private and voluntary worldwide standard for sustainable agriculture. Its implementation and certification are increasingly becoming a prerequisite for exporting food and vegetables to EU countries and other high-income markets. The aim of the paper is to examine farmers’ progress in sustainable agriculture as part of the production certification within the IFA GLOBALG.A.P. standard for fruit and vegetables in 13 middle-income European countries. At the same time, the authors examine whether this progress can act as a “catalyst” which improves the export performance of these national economies in the sector of fruit and vegetables. The export performance was represented by the following criterion variables: (a) annual values of fruit and vegetable export in thousand US dollars; (b) annual values of fruit and vegetable export to high-income importing markets, in thousand US dollars and (c) the percentage share of food and vegetable export to high-income markets in the total food and vegetable export. The predictor variable was defined as the number of IFA GLOBALG.A.P. certified farmers. All variables were presented per country and year. The research included the period from 2010 to 2021, while the hypotheses were tested using the panel regression analysis. Individual models were tested for each criterion variable, and all three models were adequate. The results show that the rise of IFA GLOBALG.A.P. certified producers increases the values of all three studied criterion variables. The results that were obtained complement and enrich the scarce academic literature in this field related to developing countries in Europe. In addition, the research offers guidelines and recommendations for directing national policies toward greater implementation of private and voluntary farm certification schemes for sustainable agriculture.

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