Competitiveness of Farming Structures in Bulgaria

There have been numerous assessment systems and publications for the competitiveness of farming enterprises around the globe due to the high academic, business and policy importance of this problem. Common shortcomings of most evaluating frameworks are that they are based on unlike competitiveness understanding, principles and criteria, traditional indicators of technical and accountancy efficiency, factors productivity, the profitability of activity, firms market share etc. Other deficiencies of dominating approaches are that they are focused on a certain (size, juridic, sectoral, territorial) dimension of farming structures, and the ignorance of a critical governance aspect of a farm’s competitiveness. This paper suggests a holistic multi-pillar framework for assessing the competitiveness of farming structures and evaluating the absolute and comparative competitiveness of Bulgarian farms of major juridical types, economic sizes, product specialization, and ecological and geographical locations. A hierarchical system consisting of four pillars of farm competitiveness (Economic efficiency, Financial endowment, Adaptability and Sustainability), and appropriate four Criteria, seventeen particular and five integral indicators are used to measure the competitiveness levels. The study has found that the competitiveness of farms in the country is at a good level, but there is significant differentiation in the levels and factors of farms with different juridical types, sizes, specializations and ecological and geographical locations. Besides the juridical type, other dimensions of farming structures like economic size, product specialization, location, market or self-sufficiency orientation, are (sometimes more) important for determining their absolute and comparative competitiveness. Critical for maintaining the competitive positions of Bulgarian farms are their low productivity, income, financial security, and adaptability to changes in the natural environment. For the improvement of the later weaknesses are to be directed farm management strategies and public policy support measures. A large portion of farms of different types has low competitiveness, and if adequate measures are not taken in due time to improve management and restructuring farms, the efficiency of state support, etc., a significant part of Bulgarian farms will cease to exist in the near future.