Globalization of Slovenian Agricultural and Food Trade

This paper analyses globalization patterns in the Slovenian agricultural and food trade. It examines prevailing trade structures and trade types to study differences and similarities in trade specialization patterns between primary and processed agricultural and food products across product groups, over time and in comparison with some other European Union countries.We distinguish agricultural and food trade flows by the degree of processing on primary, processed and other agricultural and food products separately for direct household consumption and for industry. With this, we add to the existent literature for Slovenia and for other new European Union members this product classification. Most of Slovenian agricultural and food trade is in the processed products. One-way or inter-industry trade dominates Slovenian agricultural and food trade structures. Within the matched two-way or intra-industry trade the significance in specialization is on low-quality vertical intra-industry trade. This kind of trade types in agricultural and food trade structures is not consistent with the findings for countries with developed food processing, suggesting that restructuring of the Slovenian food-processing sector has not yet been completed.