DEVELOPMENTS IN THE INCOME SITUATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR IN THE SELECTED EU MEMBER STATES

The objective of this research is to provide a case study in the field of ambitious agricultural and rural development programmes of four neighbouring EU member states, namely Czechia, Italy, Hungary, Austria. The efficient agricultural production and compensation for employees strengthen the income conditions of the rural population in the selected countries, which can give insights into the impact of rural population support for a sustainable and competitive agricultural sector for other countries. The traditional developing trends of their agricultural sectors and food production with similar agricultural economic features make the comparison of these countries possible. This analysis focuses on the main economic indicators of agricultural income by emphasizing correlations among GDP growth, agricultural gross value added, compensation payments, wages and salaries, annual working units, food production per capita, agricultural emissions, rural population, nitrogen use, GDP in purchasing power parity per capita and arable land use based on principal component analysis with varimax rotation and principal component scores for describing the reasons of economic differences among the analysed countries represented on a two-dimensional map based on their Principal Component Scores at the economic development level by multisided overviews of regional economics, agricultural development and environmental conservation. The main conclusion is that rural population was able to increase income (compensation payments, wages and salaries) in the four Member States during the period from 2010 to 2018. Czechia with the highest average land use concentration got the best indicator of the gross factor income per annual working unit. In 2010, the gross factor income in Czechia was three times higher than that of Austria and higher than that of Italy. By the end of 2018 Czechia achieved a considerable production growth of 35.5% but the increase of its gross factor income was even more spectacular, twice as high compared to Italy and 2.5 times higher compared to Austria. Compensation for employees and salaries and wages played the most important role in keeping the rural population in its original places accompanied by sustainable development.