Evaluation of ecological sustainability within the agriculture of the Danube Region in the Republic of Serbia

Specialization of production and intensive use of mechanization, energy, pesticides, mineral fertilizers, concentrated animal feed and newly established varieties and races imply serious consequences for the environment and agro-biodiversity. In order to ensure sustainable development, protection of agro-environment and preservation of food quality and food safety, imposes the need for renewal of the relations between agriculture and nature. According to that, sustainable agriculture (also known as bioeconomics) is established and developing, and it includes: ensuring of food safeness (quantitatively, qualitatively and structurally); preservation of natural environment; valorisation and efficient use of agricultural resources; improvement of agriculture competitiveness (on domestic and foreign market) and realization of production surpluses; gaining of balanced and stable farmers’ incomes and growth of living standard of population that live in rural areas. Depending on regional specificities of production area, environmentally sustainable production systems and techniques in agriculture differ among themselves, but also they have a lot in common, which are before all related to ensuring and improvement of soil fertility and more rational application of pesticides and mineral fertilizers. Faced with the essential requirements of economic and ecological efficiency achievement, in other words production profitability with minimal risk of environment violation, Serbian agriculturalists strive to adjust their production as much as possible to the regulations of good agricultural practice.93 Using the methods for evaluation of the ecological sustainability on the agricultural husbandries, authors were directed their research to the selected family husbandries within the defined territorial units of the Danube region in Serbia, as are: the area of the Upper Danube region, within the Metropolitan area Belgrade – Novi Sad (also known as the Central Danube region) and in the Carpathians (also known as the Lower Danube region). The main goal of research is to express and compare the willingness of family husbandries in the Danube region within the Serbia toward respect of the current requirements that are imposed by environment-friendly production in agriculture