Changing Landscape of European Agriculture [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Nineteen scholars from all over the world have contributed to this volume in celebration of Csaba Csaki's seventieth birthday. It is a small gift of appreciation and thanks from us, his colleagues, for the guidance, friendship and inspiration he has given us throughout our careers as professional agricultural economists. The book's title, Changing Landscape of European Agriculture, reflects the main interest in Csaba's work. The volume contains papers that were presented at the honorary conference held 4 November 2010, at the Corvinus University of Budapest. The participants were colleagues of Csaba Csaki during the past decades at the Corvinus University, World Bank, IIASA, and in various scientific projects. Moreover, the book contains two additional papers which were not presented at the conference due to technical reasons. The volume is divided into an introductory section including foreword by Tamas Mészáros and an overview about Csaba Csaki professional contributions by Csaba Forgács, and three parts, corresponding to the major themes that have continued in Csaba's writings throughout his career. The appendix contains a short biography and a bibliography of his written work from 1966 to 2010. The part one Transition in Agriculture begins with a philosophical introduction, „Transition to What? Reflections on the Status of Capitalism as an Ideology", by David Harvey. Harvey addresses a general, but very topical question in the era of recent economic crisis "what price capitalism now". This issue is especially important for the evaluation of transition in agriculture. He offers an alternative perspective on the metaphysics of economics, which now seems to be pertinent to the apparent difficulties with the capitalist system, , _ notwithstanding its obvious successes. The beginning of transition some scholars believed that former states farms and cooperatives will be replaced by western types of family farms. In other ; words, farm structures should be converged over time. However, after twenty years the stylised facts do not support this prediction. Ulrich Koester's and Mar- |, tin Petrick's contribution, ''Embedded Institutions and Persistence of Large Scale | ¦ Farms in Russia", try to explain the discrepancy between theory and reality for , Russian agriculture. They argue the evolution of super-large farms could only arise because cooperative and corporate farms survived up to bankruptcy and