AGRICULTURE AND CHANGE IN NORTH WESTERN CROATIA

Abstract

Farmers are a significant factor in the well-being of any society, so it is important to research their attitudes and opinions about agriculture, rural development and similar topics related to agriculture. This paper presents attitudes of owners of family farms regarding agriculture in rural area of north western Croatia on various aspects of agriculture. The research was conducted in 2010. and 2021. within the convenient sample of owners of family farms via Google questionnaire. It was obtained wide range of answers about socio-demographic characteristics of the farmers, basic information about their agricultural production, challenges of institutional support to agricultural production, attitudes about subsidies in agriculture, use of agricultural services, domestic agricultural production, entering European Union, Euroscepticism, etc. There are two significant differences between Croatian farmers before and after Croatia's entry into the European Union. The first one is the structure of family farms and the role of agriculture in the economy which have been changed during this period of research and had a big influence on farmer's vision of development of agriculture and their role in rural development, in general.  The second one is the fact that Croatian agriculture, attitudes toward agriculture and the mentality of farmers are changing slowly and the farmers are aware the problems in agriculture, but still, they believe in better future of Croatian agriculture.