Lela Ristić, Nikola Bošković and Danijela Despotović
Sustainable development is one of global imperatives and it involves the harmonization of economic, environmental, and social development goals, with an appropriate institutional support. There are plenty of resources pertaining to the sustainable development of agriculture and tourism, as numerous studies and practical examples worldwide confirm. The paper highlights the example of the Republic of Serbia and can be of use for other countries with similar resource potentials and developmental constraints. Namely, agriculture and tourism in the Republic of Serbia are distinguished by abundant natural and cultural-historical resources, but what mostly lacks are funds for serious investment, as well as a modern and holistic approach to development, so the available resources are insufficiently used. Accordingly, the research aims to point to the necessity of a more creative use of agro-tourism resources, i.e. to the more promising directions of the integral development of agriculture and tourism on sustainable grounds. The paper results highlight the extreme importance of institutional support to agriculture and tourism networking within the concept of sustainable development.
Stanislav Zekić, Bojan Matkovski and Žana Kleut
By acquiring the conditions for the usage of the pre-accession funds of the European Union, concretely the instrument for rural development (Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance in Rural Development – IPARD), The Republic of Serbia (RS) will have a chance to improve the position of its agricultural farms and the conditions of its rural areas. Agriculture is specifically important for the economy in RS, and the rural population makes up almost one-half of the population, which additionally enlarges an interest in these funds. In addition, the objective of the research is to identify the effects of the usage of the IPARD funds on the development of the rural areas, respectively the socio-economic progress of the rural population. A qualitative descriptive analysis on the basis of the empirical data was used. The basic conclusions are that, thus, structured funds will have a limited impact on the reduction in the development inequalities and the achievement of the parity living conditions between the rural and the urban areas. Namely, the dominant focus of the IPARD funds on the investments in agricultural farms and enterprises, and not in rural households, limits the level of their impact on the rural development in RS.