Economic and Financial Sustainability Dependency on Subsidies: The Case of Goat Farms in Greece

Abstract

Goat farming is an important production sector not only for Greece, but also for other Mediterranean countries, as it contributes to the family economy in rural areas. Despite the importance of goat farming, this sector has experienced economic difficulties due to poor management and increased production costs. The aim of our research is to determine goat farm profitability by surveying goat farmers for revenues, variable costs, and fixed costs of their farms. With the use of Principal Component Analysis, all economic factors contributing to overall production costs are examined, as well as their specific impacts on cost formulation. According to our results, goat farms in Greece are not profitable and they cannot survive without government subsidies. Farm economics and agricultural policies could be leveraged to improve community and environmental outcomes in order for farms to be economically and financially sustainable.

Volume 9, Issue 4

“…In PCA, a variable's communality value reveals how much of the variation is explained by the extracted component. A value greater than 0.35 is appropriate for PCA analysis to achieve a statistical significance of 0.05 and a power level of 80% (Tsiouni et al, 2021). The greater the communality value, the more it explains the variance of the original variable of interest.…”

Techno-economic and financial index analysis for the improvement of entrepreneurship and competitiveness strategies of Greek goat enterprises

“…In spite of the fact that most goat farms are family-run and small, family work cannot meet their needs, which highlights the chronic structural difficulties of Greek livestock and the need to deal with them by restructuring their size and converting them into a business (Galanopoulos et al, 2011). In addition its current form, subsidies are crucial to the competitiveness and viability of goat farms without which they appear unprofitable, which applies both to conventional as well as organic farms (Tzouramani et al, 2011;Tsiouni et al, 2021). The same situation exists not only in Greek goat farming but also in the goat farming of neighboring Balkan countries such as Bulgaria (Stankov, 2020).…”

Policy to Localize SDGs as Cultural Agent in Central Java

“…Many studies reveal how local governments localize the SDGs as a new development perspective. Research by Edward et al (2021); Bourlon et al (2021); Tsiouni (2021), for example, shows that efforts to localize the SDGs apply a kind of linear process model that is carried out through the stages of understanding the SDGs, forming institutions, setting goals based on strategic issues in the region, implementing action plans, monitoring and evaluation, communicating, reporting [7,8,9]. This study looks pretty mechanistic that occupy the localization of SDGs as stages in management.…”