Development tendencies in crop production in Slovakia after 2004 – regional differentiations

Abstract

One of the key milestones of joining European Union was to decrease disparities within economical and social environment in Slovakia. On the contrary, disparities are still growing, also in agriculture. Structural changes in agriculture between 2004 and 2014 are explained based on several stages of development, leading to regional differentiations. Based on indicators of crop production such as – gross crop production, crop production (cereals, oil plants, potatoes, sugar beet and perennial fodder crops), production per one hectare of selected crops, per capita production of selected crops and per 1 hectare of agricultural land this paper shows trends in crop production in Slovakia between 2004 and 2014. Individual regions and their ranking in Slovakia are analysed based on the level NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) III (regions). The classification of development of indicators of crop production in regions of Slovakia in relation to the calculated average value of Slovak Republic from 2004 to 2014 is based on calculated average values for the monitored period. Selected stasticial methods (standard deviation, coefficient of variation, the ratio of the data set and the relative size of the data file) are applied to analyse, study and interpret development of regional disparities in crop production in Slovakia.