Model-based risk-adjusted planning for sustainable agriculture under agricultural trade liberalization: Ukrainian case study
Abstract
The paper summarizes development trends of the agricultural sector in Ukraine in the recent years and identifies main impacts of current trade policies, in particular, socio-economic-environmental consequences of agricultural trade internationalization and liberalization in Ukraine. We propose an integrated modeling approach to support policy recommendations that may help enhance national food security and improve economic, social and environmental standards especially in rural areas. The approach includes stochastic optimization procedure that investigates optimal robust policies regarding agricultural production portfolios, production allocation and level of intensification, processing and trade under desirable goals and constraints in the presence or risks and uncertainties. The introduced goals and constraints are coherent with the goals of the State Program of Ukrainian agriculture development to 2015 and include such criteria as increasing rural incomes, employment, creating new entrepreneurship businesses, supporting agriculture competitiveness and ecologically safe agricultural production. The developed approach may be useful for national and regional agrarian planners.