The aim of this paper is to determine the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) subsidies on the level of economic sustainability of farms by means of three-fold study. To determine the economic sustainability of farms the authors applied the income gap ratio. Next, the level of income differentiation between farms of various economic classes was established. The last part consisted of the recognition of statistically significant CAP schemes that shape agricultural income in farms of different size and in assessing how the respective subsidies should increase or decrease to fill the recognized gap, based on the coefficients of panel regression. The spatial scope covered all EU countries in 2005–2015. Results show that due to the CAP’s support the average income of farms has approached the average non-agricultural income, but distribution of this support favored the largest farms, increasing disparities within the sector.

We investigated the resilience of small-scale family farms because of the contemporary importance of both the farms’ resilience and the role of these farms in five countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The authors addressed a research gap concerning cross-sectional research on the resilience of farms by combining determinants from various fields. Thus, the primary goal of this article was to identify microeconomic and political factors and links to markets that affect the resilience of small-scale family farms in Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Serbia. Using a database of over 3500 farms, the resilience of the farms was calculated, and then the impact of selected factors on that resilience was determined. The research showed that the production scale was the key determinant of the resilience of farms. To achieve higher benefits, increasing the production should be combined with strengthening the market integration of agricultural producers. The position of the producer in the food supply chain determined the income situation of the farm (economic stability). This shaped the quality of life of the family members (social stability). Identifying the effects of those dependencies may provide recommendations for the policy of supporting small-scale family farms in the analysed countries.

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Improved food security remains a major challenge for policymakers in Afghanistan. The objective of this study is to investigate the prevalence and drivers of food insecurity among farming households in the Takhar region of Afghanistan. Household questionnaire survey datasets were obtained from 262 farmers via multi-stage sampling across four districts. The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) was constructed to assess the prevalence of food insecurity, and an ordered probit econometric model was used to identify the factors influencing the prevalence rates in farming families. The findings indicate that 66.79% of the farming households were food insecure, whilst 30.53% were severely food insecure. After adjustment of socio-economic and demographic characteristics of families, the ordered probit results reveals that household head education, dependency ratio, farm income, access to non-agricultural income, livestock unit, group membership, borrowing, farm diseases, flood, and war significantly influenced farming households’ food insecurity in the study area. Our findings highlight the urgent requirement for policies and initiatives to support farmers to improve their overall food security. Such strategies should focus on introducing improved farming techniques, enhancing farmer education levels, livestock development programs, building and empowering farmers groups, creating credit access to households, and providing humanitarian food support.

Sustainable development plays an important role in shaping conditions for economic growth, social development and care for the natural environment. The issue was also noticed at the level of the European Union, which is expressed among others by creating sectoral policies, including the Common Agricultural Policy. The aim of the article is to determine the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy on the level of socio-economic sustainability of farms in Poland. The authors formulate a hypothesis that the existing solutions serve the achievement of economic sustainability, determined by the agricultural to non-agricultural income ratio, but they do not provide sustainability of farms in terms of the social element understood as taking income disparities into consideration. In the article, panel regression and the ratio of income from representative FADN farms to average annual gross salary per employee in Poland in the years 2004–2017 were used. It was found that thanks to the support from the Common Agricultural Policy, the average income of farms comes close to the average income of the non-agricultural sector. However, the influence of the subsidies on changes in economic sustainability was uneven in various economic size classes of farms—the strongest farms benefited the most, which means that social sustainability in terms of equal distribution of income was not achieved.