3.2. Approaches competitiveness of agricultural enterprises

Competitiveness of a particular economic system is generally understood as its ability to achieve the results corresponding goals of a system and their dynamics in a competitive environment.

From such general definition it follows that for an assessment of the competitiveness level of a particular economic system it is necessary not only to define the goals and criterion options that allow quantification of the rate of reaching these goals, but also to define a range of factors determining and influencing their achievement.

For the evaluation of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises we can choose at least two approaches related to the definition of the level of an economic system whose characteristics (in this case its competitiveness) and behavior should be assessed and also of the resolution point of view.

It is obvious that the analysis of competitiveness on the resolution level of agricultural enterprises is more elaborated with respect to the methodology and it is also used more often. In this case, commodity structure and its cost parameters in comparison with the level of market prices, i.e. the conditions of the supply related to the criterion, factors and conditions of the development of the financial-economic effectiveness of an enterprise, allow an immediate assessment of a potential level of an enterprise competitiveness and an important context of its development, especially on the basis of intercorporate comparison on the horizontal level with agriculture as a sector.

For assessing the range of the determination factors that influence the conditions of achieving the goals of the given economic system and the position of an agricultural enterprise with respect to its "production" role under the current conditions it is necessary to use different resolution point of view, to evaluate competitiveness of an agricultural enterprise with respect to acceptability of a structure and parameters of the production offered by the market, i.e. in a broader context and in terms of the feasibility of vertical integration in the system of food production.

With respect to the ongoing processes of globalization, there is a substantial expansion of the relevant market related to the most of the commodities in this context. In this respect we can expect not only changes in the definition of regional markets (often not respecting the range of national boundaries), but also the influence of agrarian-political tools that to a large extent deform the conditions of competitiveness of enterprises in a broader than national area of agrarian markets. Therefore, the significance of the analysis of the effect of factor’s range – that forms sectorial and national specificities, or the conditions differences, under which the agrarian sector achieved certain results – grows.

In relation to the methodological questions of an analysis of agricultural competitiveness, at least two other aspects must be taken into account:

• an option and rate of the production use of the differentiated of natural resources, where agricultural production should be allocated to the production conditions with the qualification for the supply price accepted by the market, that is for the key commodities more and more often determined by the conditions of the international market (and the tools of agrarian policy) rather than national or regional markets;

• influence of the macroeconomic environment formed by the total level of economy influencing agriculture in many ways (e.g. availability, quality and prices of inputs, workforce qualification, level of technologies, level of income of inhabitants projecting in the demand for food, rate and forms of taxes), but also by the legal frame defining the potential of realization of the suppliers market power and downstream processing and distribution links on the markets with agricultural-food commodities.

In this context competitiveness of the immediate downstream food industry plays an important role, because is becomes one of the determining factors in the application of agricultural production on domestic and foreign markets through its engagement on the vertical and effectiveness.

Mutual dependence of the downstream links of the food vertical when meeting the criterion of competitiveness on expanding European and global food markets is significantly increasing. Sale of agricultural products on domestic and international markets is more and more realized through products of higher stages of processing. Within the food market the role of processing and finalization is growing, which changes the position of agricultural production in the food chain.