A number of approaches and methods has been applied to evaluate an enterprise's success (rating) in a way to look on the firm's performance in more or less comprehensive view. The paper presents methodological tools for evaluation of the financial and non-financial characteristics, specifically the application of discriminant and cluster analysis in the case of agricultural enterprises. The methodology for total evaluation will further require the improvement in the assessment of financial and non-financial variables along with justification of their weights. The key thing is to ensure that the designed criteria for total assessment have the capabilities to assess the potential risks linked to business. That would enable to evaluate the business not only from the past and present point of view but also from the future perspective.Key words: financial evaluation, efficiency, agriculture, discriminant and cluster analysis Abstrakt: K hodnocení úspěšnosti podniků je využívána řada přístupů a nástrojů, které umožňují více či méně komplexní pohled na výkonnost podniku. Příspěvek představuje metodický aparát k hodnocení finančních a nefinančních charakteristik spočívající v aplikaci diskriminační a shlukové analýzy v případě zemědělských podniků. Metodologii pro komplexní hodnocení bude třeba dále upravit ve směru ohodnocení finančních a nefinančních charakteristik a jejich vah. Zejména bude nutné se zaměřit na vybrání takových kritérií, které podávají do určité míry informace o potenciálním riziku v hospodaření podniku. To umožní nejen hodnocení podniků ex post, ale také jejich budoucí vývoj.

Production of food and beverages is one of the Czech traditional branches of processing industry. The article tries to describe the model prediction on the sector structure development oriented on labour and personal costs in food industry sector up to 2013 and it is based on the continuous monitoring of these indicators in the period 2000−2005. Except regress analysis of time orders, there was used the method of exponential smoothing. With regard to certain antagonistic tendencies, i.e. the lasting fall of the number of workers in the monitored period but at the same time the growth of personal costs, there were projected separate predictions of these indicators up to 2013, aimed namely at the set of companies with 20 and more employees. The prediction of the selected data up to the year 2013 is based on the running results of the Research Plan of the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics (VÚZE). The probable development of the number of workers and personal costs in the individual branches of food industry is characterised.

The OECD-FAO's Agricultural Outlook and the European Commission DG AGRI's Medium-term agricultural outlook report provide price forecasts. Users of these forecasts may be interested in their accuracy. This paper measures the accuracy for values forecast for the following year. These are very accurate as regards the AO EU price of poultry, the EC outlook price of common wheat and feed barley, but not so accurate as regards the EC outlookon beef prices. In some cases, discrepancies between the forecasts follow a systematic pattern. The paper also discovers how the OECD-FAO's outlook projections for a common wheat world representative price are changing from year to year. Usually they are positively correlated, but there are certain exceptions where their correlation is significantly negative. This means that the price projections of some commodities may vary dramatically.

The article is dealing with the relation of the soil value and nitrogen needs as the major intensification factor jointly affecting the quality of the environment. According to the obtained data and knowledge from about 500 surveyed plots, the premises of production function proposals are analyzed with regard on their further use in optimization of economics of crop production and their impact on soil value. Based on values of production functions and in compliance with field experiment results, done a sophisticated computation of an optimal nitrogen dosage amount is adjusted according to farm gate price of wheat and purchase price of nitrogen with respect to environmental requirements on the production. Results are compared with the application of nitrogen and yields achieved in agricultural practice.

Production functions of selected agricultural crops are analyzed on the basis of input production factors including assessment of their process. Development of production functions build on a detailed assessment of production factors and their expression by a part of the factor analysis. The goal of the proposal is the opportunity to build a comprehensive model of main crops production on agricultural land that provides assessment of relation between the development of input parameters in terms of production intensity and specific conditions of changing climatic factors. The paper compiled crop production function as measured by gradual regression of input variables into the linear model. The proposed models statically define the relationship between yield, as a dependent variable and the proposed independent variables. The resulting statistical indicators are robust and significant enough. For each crop are identified independent variables in a different structure with regard to statistical model. It is possible to make an econometric model for assessing economic and environmental contexts through the use of the identified functions.