Food security and the environmental impact of agriculture in European transition countries

The article is devoted to the issue of relations between agriculture and the environment, considered in the context of the systemic changes that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe. Against the background of general considerations on the importance of natural and anthropogenic factors (mainly politics), the research was carried out on European post-communist countries, some of which joined the EU and some are outside it. The research was conducted in the context of the EU-15 countries and average values ​​for the world. The analyses covered the period 1993–2013, i.e. the years when all the countries discussed existed continuously. Using the author's methodology, changes in the productivity of agriculture (understood as the amount of agricultural energy produced per 1 ha) and its impact on the environment, defined by the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, were indicated. As a result of the analyses, the fundamental influence of demographic and natural factors on the intensity of agricultural production and the scale of emissions was indicated. The possibility of satisfying food security depends on the technologies used, and indirectly on the level of economic development of the country. Attention was drawn to the different approaches to the development of agriculture in the countries undergoing systemic transformation, which are EU members and those outside of it. In the area of ​​environmental sustainability, the greatest progress was noted by countries that did not join the EU after the systemic change. In this context, considerations were undertaken on non-political factors shaping the relations between agriculture and the environment.