The authors consider the adaptation of the system of budget support and management of the public finance in this country’s agrarian sector to the WTO requirements. They justify the necessity of qualitative transformations of the institutional environment for the support of agriculture and concrete measures for its improvement. The article proposes a mechanism to adjust the distribution of the state’s financial resources for the agriculture based on the indicators of social utility and comparative advantages of the agrarian enterprises in the context of the WTO requirements and modern experience of the Western managerial systems

Keywords:

The article generalizes the peculiarities of the European model of support of national agricul-tural producers and its impact on the degree of liberalization of foreign trade with third coun-tries. The author analyzes the main contradictions of the systems of farmer support in the light of the formation of the Ukraine-EU free trade area

Keywords:

The article reveals the opportunities and key factors of the increase of farming households’ incomes by way of their implementation in the market agro food system. Typical households groups have been excreted on the basis of socio-demographic characteristics. It was ascertained that the current socio-economic policy is not able to solve the problem of rural poverty. As a result, more than half of the families with children, who shape the future of the Ukrainian village, belong to the poorest households. Therefore, the authors justify the need of a policy to support the incomes of rural families in order to improve their commercialization. Using the statistical method of grouping and matching, the authors identified various key factors of the commercialization of agricul-tural activities of selected social groups of rural households and their economic effect, which is increasing the incomes from the sale of agricultural products. It was estimated that the highest effect for improving welfare of the poor rural households can be achieved through increasing land in use (extensive method) or raising technical and technological and innovation support (intensive method) of the households agricultural activity. The calcula-tions confirm the highest income increase is possible with the joint effect of the two factors, which requires the increase in the land area in use up to 2 ha and annual expenditures on agricultural activities, within the techno-logical feasibility, in the amount of UAH 2-3 thousand. The authors suggest to provide the necessary level of expenditures though the implementation of targeted state support for selected household groups over a period of up to 5 years in exchange for their guaranty to improve the level of commercialization.

Keywords:private peasant farm, agrarian activities, market orientation, factors of commercialization

The interdependencies among land use systems at national and international levels motivate the development of global land use models facilitating the analysis of the trends of plausible future land use under the conditions of increasing population and climate change for environmental and food security purposes. Computational complexity of such models limits the land use projections to aggregate levels which give no clue regarding the potentially critical local heterogeneities. Improving these projections at fine resolutions requires new methods of systems analysis for integrating land use models at different scales. For that purpose, we have proposed a dynamic cross-entropy based probabilistic downscaling model which facilitates to obtain future aggregate land use projections from global models (e.g. GLOBIOM) to finer resolutions. The proposed procedure allows incorporating data received from different sources, such as satellite images, statistics, and expert opinions, as well as data from global land use models.
Using downscaling procedure, we estimate future impacts of global climate changes on the land use in Ukraine (on the rayon level) in accordance with the aggregated results of GLOBIOM modeling. They indicate some growth of pressure on land resources in Ukraine associated with the satisfaction of the increasing global demands for foods and biofuels. On the one side, the model forecasts a small growth of demand (0.2%) for arable land by the middle of the XXI century. At the national level, it doesn't pose any serious threats, but, on the case regional level, it can lead to certain ecological risks (in the oblasts with an extremely high share of arable land). On the other side, the model also predicts some growth of the demand for forests, including SRF, and pastures. These changes could have some positive effect by supporting safety and sustainable land use in Ukraine.
Further investigations will be oriented to comparing the results of modeling based on different available maps of land cover and land use (GLC2000, MODIS2000, GLOBCOVER2000) and to estimating the land demand under different scenarios of agriculture improvements (technology, management etc.).

Keywords: land use, modeling, aggregated data, downscaling

The Common Agricultural Policy of European Union (CAP EU) is the most modern model of agrarian policy, that provides equal competitive capacities for the development of each agriproducer and rural areas. Taking into account the European vector of Ukraine' development, this investigation aims to analyze the European support system in terms of the promotion of small argiproducers, which can help to offer some recommendations for the improvement of Ukrainian agrarian policy.
Analysis of CAP EU indicates that measures of rural development pillar are more favorable for small farm development than market support programs. But the inclusion of small farms and, in particular, semi-subsistence farms into the rural development programs is lower than that of the larger commercial enterprises. And access limitation to the support program for small farms depends both on the direct factors (minimal access levels) and on the indirect ones (entrepreneur and personal skills, education level, information availability etc.).
Practical experience of CEE countries confirms that participation of small farms in the non-oriented rural development programs is very low (less than 0.5 percent of total). In this case it is more efficient to use the target programs, like the Measure 141 "Semi-subsistence farm support", implemented specially for the CEE countries. Each CEE country adapted the European regulation with regard to their agriculture structure. This helped to identify a well-defined target group of the most viable beneficiary farms. The most successful case study among the investigated CEE countries is the Polish one due to the favorable institutional environment (including fiscal policy for small agriproducers) and the active work of the local advisory services.
Specialists mention the insufficiency of a solely financial support for modernization of small farms. The development of these agriproducers requires a parallel solution of one more problem, namely the expansion of their outlets.
We estimated the number of potential applicants in the case of implementing a similar program in Ukraine using different scenarios of access criteria. In determining the amount of support, one should consider not only the need to expand financing of current production costs, but primarily the need to raise capital investment in the farms' fixed assets.
Since it has been established that the possibilities of increasing agrarian output and the level of commercialization of semi-subsistence farms in Ukraine are related to the development of livestock production, much attention should be paid to the expansion of the trade channels and, above all, their inclusion into the agri-food chains (short and long ones). In this case, it is necessary to use all the opportunities arising in the context of strengthening connection and communication between towns and villages, as well as increasing the mobility and accessibility of remote areas.

Keywords: semi-subsistence farming households, market support measures, rural development, EU Common Agricultural Policy

The European bioenergy policy is changing dynamically, following the trend of sustainable development. Ukraine, having the significant agricultural potential and following the European vector of development, strongly depends on the European tendencies. Changing the structure and level of demand for bioenergy resources has an important effect on the development of the national bioenergy market and the production policy of agriproducers.
The purpose of this study is to summarize the impact of recent institutional and legislative initiatives of the EU on the development of the bioenergy market in Ukraine and analyze possible challenges in the field of land use in this regard.
The paper highlights the instability of the development of Ukraine's domestic biofuels market. Stagnation in the market for liquid biofuels is mainly a result of regulatory shortcomings. At the same time, Ukraine's exports to the EU markets, due to the scarce and technologically outdated processing capacity, remains limited to bioenergy raw materials. Analysis of the trends in the production and exports of rapeseeds in Ukraine indicates a high dependence on the EU market. A similar situation also persisted in the market of solid biofuels. The main factor of change here was the increase in domestic prices for traditional energy resources in 2015-2016, which caused subsequent changes in the tariff policy. The analysis conducted made it possible to identify key trends and measures to encourage the development of Ukraine's biomass market.
The growing demand for biofuels gradually leads to changes in the structure of land use in Ukraine. However, due to the high level of cultivation in Ukraine, the scale of these changes in quantitative terms is negligible. During 2004-2016, the area of arable land only increased by 0.3%. At the same time, the threats to sustain-able development are not so much related to the general changes in land use, as to structural changes in the field of plant growing. Modeling results indicate a possible increase in the pressure on land resources in the future as a result of the implementation of European bioenergy policy. In the meantime, a milder effect could be achieved by implementing a scenario of limiting the use of the first generation biofuels, which include rapeseed oil: in this scenario, the additional need for arable land might be by one third lower than in the baseline scenario.
Analysis gives grounds for concluding that it is only the types of raw materials used for biofuel production that will change in the future, while both political and market conditions will contribute to the cultivation of new types of raw materials growth for exporting to the EU and for meeting Ukraine's domestic needs in biofuels in accordance with the international obligations incurred. The market policy of Ukrainian producers (mainly of those export-oriented ones) in such conditions can carry certain risks to sustainable development of rural areas. This requires improvement of regulatory policy in the field of land use and development of appropriate mechanisms to prevent the critical use of biomass as the only source of maintaining the natural fertility of soils.

Keywords: bioenergy sector, biofuels, biomass, Indirect Land Use Change, EU

Based on extended interpretation of the essence of farming, the article outlines the boundaries of the farming segment in Ukrainian agriculture. This farming segment includes not only registered farms, but also those households, which meet the global farming criteria. The authors estimate the number of the households (personal peasant farms) of farmer type and their productive potential and prove that one of the top priorities in improving the mechanism of state support for farming is encouraging the households to institutionalize (formalize) their agricultural activities.
It is proposed to introduce a five-year program to provide financial assistance to the households (personal peasant farms) in order to expand the scale of their current agricultural output, to start new activities, and to increase the level of commercialization and subsequent formalization in the regulatory environment. The main provisions of the program were developed, such as the requirements for potential beneficiaries and the results of their participation in the program; conditions for the allocation and use of support funds; estimated number of participants; the need for budget financing etc. According to calculations, during the program period, it will involve 75 thousand households, who, after fulfilling all the stipulated conditions, will join the farm segment.

Keywords: state support, households, business plan, personal peasant farms (PPF), state support program, farmers potential, formalization of PPF activity