Zbigniew Floriańczyk

Economic growth and societal well-being are highly dependent on the availability and efficient use of energy resources. This process evolves over time, along with changing developmental challenges, leading to an alteration of the world energy mix. The role of renewable energy sources in addressing these challenges has been widely recognized, but mostly from the ecological and climate change perspectives. Not enough focus has been paid to economic growth effects, such as potential job creation and income increases related to this process, often taking place in rural areas due to the availability of space and raw materials. In this context, the first objective of this study is to analyze the complementarity and substitution effects of investments in renewables and their connectedness with global economic growth. The second is to discuss the importance of effective strategic planning in supporting the growth of rural areas by promoting the production of renewable energy, based on selected international examples, including the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food recently presented by the European Commission. Using various data sources and employing basic statistical tools, we found that investing in renewable energy contributes to global economic growth. We also show how different countries view the indispensable role of rural areas in this process differently in their strategic policy documents.

The article investigates whether labor productivity serves as a source for financing remuneration and whether productivity growth is adequate to support the corresponding increase in compensation within the agricultural sector. The analysis is grounded in the producer’s equilibrium, Clark’s marginal productivity theory, and the Lewis model. We utilized constant price data from the Economic Accounts for Agriculture across all EU Member States for the 2010–2022 period, encompassing the entire agricultural sector. The research methodology consisted of two stages: first, a comparative analysis of the examined categories was conducted; second, the conclusions were verified using the results of a panel regression analysis. The study reveals that, in many concerned countries, the rise in labor productivity primarily resulted from decreased agricultural employment. In specific countries, including the Czech Republic, France, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia, the growth in remuneration outpaced productivity growth, suggesting potential management inefficiencies. The results of the panel regression models confirmed that labor productivity growth is strongly associated with a reduction in labor input and an increase in labor remuneration.

The article examines trends in changes in relations among three production factors (land, labor, and capital) in agriculture in the selected European Union countries. For the purpose, the assumptions regarding the direction and the mechanism of changes in the relations were verified empirically....

The negative socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are widely discussed. However, relatively less attention is paid to its impact on the world commodity price formation including energy and food prices. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on world energy commodity prices and their interactions with world food commodity prices. Using the World Bank data on commodity prices we look for evidence of changes in energy and food prices caused by occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was assumed to be a negative shock to the global economy in terms of both supply and demand. Based on data series analysis of indices of world energy and food commodity prices, it is evident that after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic the energy prices, especially oil prices, plummeted. Food prices followed the same direction; however, their plunge was much less extreme. In general, it can be concluded that the pandemic caused a severe energy price shock which clearly had a negative impact on global economic growth, but the scale of this impact differs depending on the type of economic sector and countries’ net export positions in energy and food trade.

The sustainability transition of rural areas is a must due to rapid climate changes and biodiversity loss. Given the limited resources of rural communities, policy should facilitate a just sustainability transition of the EU rural areas. The analysis of EU development policies, past performance and the envisaged scope of reform, presented in this study point to a serious inconsistency between the declaration and implementation of relevant policies. Namely, the marginal role rural areas perform in common agricultural policy and cohesion policy; a result of the lack of a complex approach to rural development. The analysis was based on the concept of good governance and took a multi-level perspective. It advocates territorial justice as an approach that should be at the core of creating a comprehensive policy for rural areas in the EU, including their diversity and empowering local communities to choose the transition pathway that is most in line with their current situation and development capacity. This analysis fills a gap in research on the evolution of the rural development policy in the EU. This research can inform the reprioritization and intensification of efforts to create equitable policies for EU rural development.