Arnold Csonka, Tibor Bareith, and Veronika Alexandra Gál
Kaposvár University Faculty of Economics, Hungary
Imre Fertő
Kaposvár University Faculty of Economics and Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
Agroforestry is a sustainable form of land management that optimizes the use of natural resources. The current EU Common Agricultural Policy offers several measures to promote agroforestry activities. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the spatial pattern of agroforestry supports and identify the environmental factors driving demand for supports in Hungary, using highly disaggregated regional data. Cluster analysis suggests that rural land in Hungary can be effectively segmented into five groups according to agricultural and natural resource endowments. The five groups cover different farming systems including extensive land use, forestry systems, intensive small-scale farming, balanced land use, and conventional agriculture. The revealed cluster structure and characteristics may help develop strategies to improve the efficient implementation of agroforestry and agri-environmental measures. It implies that decision-makers should identify target areas where agroforestry adoption cannot be supported spontaneously by agglomeration effects and therefore it needs to be supported by education and innovation networks.
Key words: Agroforestry, CAP, cluster analysis, nonparametric tests.