M. O. AdewumiJ. O. Animashaun
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
This study examined the relationship among farming households’ technical efficiency, dietary diversity and farm income in Kwara state, Nigeria. Respondents were randomly sampled from among the National Special Programe for food security (NSPFS) beneficiaries and non benficiaies across the 3 geo-political zones in the study area. Stochastic frontier model was used to estimate the respondents’ technical efficiency while the dietary diversity score and farm income were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to assess the level of relationship among the indicators. The study revealed a significant linear relationship among households’ dietary diversity, farm income and technical efficiency. While technical efficiency was inversely related to farm income (r = -0.278, p = 0.01) and dietary diversity (r = -0.206, p = 0.05) on one hand, dietary diversity was positively related to farm income (r = 0.307, p = 0.05). The study has two important implications; first, increasing farm income may be of relevance if the goal of enhancing food security is pursued and benefits of technical efficiency growth may not necessarily translate into enhanced farm income and dietary diversity. This study therefore suggests the provision of infrastructures that would enable the farmers to access the benefits of improved technical efficiency.
KEYWORDS
Correlation, technical efficiency, farm income, dietary diversity, Nigeria.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 318.59 KB)
G. G. AmbayeT. BerhanuG. Abera
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The study examined the determinants of domestic private investment in Ethiopia using a time series data over the period 1992-2010. The study employed an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and applied the bounds test approach in modeling the long run determinants of domestic private investment. The study found exchange rate, domestic saving and domestic credit as key factors having negative and significant impact on domestic private investment. External debt and government expenditure are found to have significant and positive effect on domestic private investment. The results imply that government expenditure stimulates domestic private investment while domestic credit and domestic saving have a constrained effect on the sector.
KEYWORDS
Domestic private investment, Ethiopia, bounds test approach, determinants, Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 871.22 KB)
I. Boháčková
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The aim of paper is to verify validity of some hypotheses which explain income disparity of agriculture under conditions of the current European agricultural model, and further to suggest a possible approach to categorization of this phenomenon. It is not dealt with all hypotheses which were expressed in connection with the income disparity, but also with those oriented to costs. Demand-oriented hypotheses will be a subject of further research. On base of the reached grade of knowledge, the present validity of hypotheses explaining farmers' income disparity by the help of specialities of agricultural production, alternative costs, and introduction of technical progress (Theory of treadmill) is analyzed.
KEYWORDS
Agriculture, income disparity, cost-oriented hypotheses, specialities of agricultural production, alternative costs, theory of treadmill, categorization of types of income disparity.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 439.03 KB)
I. Bošková
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
In the context of the market deregulation process the EU dairy sector has been reinforced by the Milk Package, comprising a series of measures addressed to producers' organizations to encourage them to participate in the dairy chain conduct. The aim of the paper is to explore if milk producers organizations in the Czech Republic dispose with characteristics to become supporting element of the sector's stability and what a potential for the farm economics they may have. The characteristics of a spectrum of organizations are examined and confronted with the business environment using the concept of dairy cooperative model. Most of organisations showed inbuilt transactions related mechanisms which might carry the regulative function, however instead of support they disrupt the chain by bargaining. It is argued for the change of their strategies with a focus on capital involvement in milk processing. Their rational functioning might improve dairy farms profitability.
KEYWORDS
Milk, producers' organizations, strategies, bargaining, value added, vertical integration, farm profitability.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 485.86 KB)
S. BotosM. Herdon
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
Different indicators and complex indexes can be used for ICT-level comparisons between countries. But usually just simple indicators are available for analyzing smaller territorial units within a country. By contrast, a multi-dimensional regional analysis allows to evaluate a given region in several ways, recognizing its strengths and weaknesses and development potential. The main aim of our research is to evaluate the availability and usage of broadband network infrastructure and the subscriber services in regional level, because the implementation of certain projects concerns principally the smaller areas directly. We used correlation analysis for find out whether there is any relation among the ICT and socio-economic indicators, regardless of the causal link between them. In the case of Hungary we present the development over time and regional differences of different indicators, which are related to the usage and availability of broadband networks. We tried to examine which factors have contributed to the change of these indicators, and to determine how the results obtained have contributed for the development of a region, what the direct or external effects are. The units of the analysis are the NUTS-2 regions of EU, but those member states, where any of the chosen indicators wasn’t available; their regions have not been included in the present analysis.
KEYWORDS
Broadband networks, rural areas, regions, Hungary.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 495.02 KB)
P. HájekH. Urbancová
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
In today’s stressful entrepreneurial environment, avoiding crisis by applying business continuity management processes may be considered a competitive advantage. Business continuity management also facilitates the elimination of threats caused by internal and external environments. It is grounded on procedures arising from good practice and organizations use them in the form of normative documents. The main goal of the article is to identify whether it is important to apply business continuity standards in selected sectors and to identify possible advantages and disadvantages for organizations. The article has been drawn up on the basis of the evaluation of a questionnaire survey (N=779; n=106) and interviews. The application of official standards by individual organizations enhances efficiency when determining necessary business continuity management processes in unfavourable situations. Last but not least, it shortens the period of restoration of key processes which, however, differ in individual economic sectors. This contribution is a follow-up to the project of CULS – wide internal grant agency (CIGA), no. 20121001 – Business continuity management contributing to higher performance in organizations.
KEYWORDS
Business continuity management, standards, agriculture, industry, ICT, Czech Republic, organizations.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 620.9 KB)
M. HavránekP. BendaV. LohrZ. Havlíček
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the safety evaluation of agrarian portals operated in the Czech Republic. It focuses mainly on security authentication process when accessing remote servers. The security of internet banking application has high level but the safety of agrarian portals seems to be very low. However, these systems contain sensitive data that must be adequately secured. The assessment covers “eAGRI” portal, “Portál farmáře” (Farmers portal), “Internet pro chovatele” (Internet for breeders) and “Agromanuál”. Two most popular domestic portals – „seznam.cz” and “Datové schránky” (Data boxes) were also included to compare the results of agricultural portals security. The aim of this paper is to point out the lack of security in relation to the management of user identities and suggest measures to improve safety.
KEYWORDS
Security, authentication, agrarian portals, intranet, metrics, information systems.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 278.46 KB)
J. HinkeM. Stárová
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The Czech national law regulating accounting is not harmonized with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Because of this, all financial statements compiled according to Czech regulations are not comparable with IFRS statements. International users of accounting information, e.g. potential investors, therefore have problems to find valid information. This article analyzes the evaluation, accounting recording, and reporting of biological assets and agricultural produce in both accounting systems. It illustrates the principal differences, and explains their impact on financial statements information. Based on a case study, the paper recommends how to implement IFRS principles to the accounting system in Czech agriculture enterprises. The authors recommend using income statements with expenses by function, which is not commonly used by Czech entities. The research findings indicate possible changes in the Czech accounting and tax laws, which may lead to a “more true and fair view” of provided accounting information. The proposals should cause that accounting information provided by financial statements compiled according to Czech law would be identical with accounting information in compliance with IFRS principals. A questionnaire survey revealed scepticism of economists agricultural companies to use fair value as the measurement basis for biological assets and agricultural produce.
KEYWORDS
International Financial Reporting Standards IFRS, statement of financial position, income statement, income (revenues), costs, expenses, gains, losses, changes in inventories, reporting date.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 440.25 KB)
T. HlavsaR. Aulová
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The article deals with the analysis of the effect of legal form and size group on the capital structure of Czech agricultural businesses of legal entities. The effect of three legal forms and six size groups on the capital structure of the business is studied, expressed by way of three categories of indebtedness. The analysis of the effect of legal form and size group is performed by way of an analysis of the dispersion of dual classification.The panel data for the article were obtained from the Albertina database, provided by the company Soliditet, s.r.o. Specifically, data from accounting statements for the years 2004 – 2010 among agricultural businesses of legal entities were utilized. A total of 16075 businesses were the object of examination, which were divided up according to legal forms (joint-stock company (AS), cooperative (D) and limited liability company (SRO) and subsequently the relevant size group (6 size groups). A total of 18 groups of businesses resulted, whereby an average balance and profit and loss statement were drawn up for each group, on the basis of which the relevant calculations were conducted. The article is part of the grant project IGA 20121069 “Identification of the main determinants of the result of economic activity of agricultural businesses of legal entities and the determination of their specifics” and of the institutional research intentions MSM 6046070906 „Economics sources of Czech agriculture and their efficient use in the context of multifunctional agri-food systems“.
KEYWORDS
Capital structure, determinants of capital structure, agricultural businesses, analysis of the dispersion of dual classification, Scheffé test.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 316.09 KB)
K. Ioannou
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
During the last decades, it has come to the attention of many scientists, working on the fields of environmental protection, that there is a tendency for the appearance of extreme environmental phenomena (floods, extreme temperatures, prolonged dry seasons etc). Additionally the frequency of these phenomena tends to shorten, which means that although they started as rare, nowadays they are more common. Many scientists believe that their appearance is directly connected to the global climate change; nonetheless however since they become more frequent there is a need for developing monitoring methods in order to protect sensitive regions from their destructive force. Additionally the protective actions must be implemented in a new framework, which mainly consists on budget cuts, personnel reductions etc. The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a methodology which can be used in order to deploy monitoring networks, which can be modular and installed in problematic regions. Additionally we present a case study of the proposed methodology for a Greek area of special interest.
KEYWORDS
Environment, Network, Monitoring, GIS.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 537.43 KB)
J. JarolímekM. Stočes
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
In the paper, the method of data collection, processing and visualization of the occurrence of non-indigenous and endangered animal species in the Czech Republic is described. Our new software enables easy data entry about the observation of monitored species to the expert public. The data obtained is then used by expert and scientific institutions in order to search for optimal solutions of nature protection and population management and results are open to the public.This analytic and software solution was developed by the Department of Information Technologies, Czech University of Life Sciences; the data has been also used by the Forestry and Wood Faculty and the Faculty of Life Sciences.
KEYWORDS
Animals, monitoring, environment, maps, GPS, visualization, non-indigenous species, Czech Republic.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 1.26 MB)
P. Kokaisl
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The main objective of this paper is to illuminate the relatively little-known process of collectivisation in Soviet Central Asia. The aim is to show the specifics of the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, using the example of Kazakhstan. The peasants were first given some land, only to have it taken it away over the course of several years, during the process of collectivisation. The poor farmers, especially those who lacked good civil morals, perceived the process chance to control the future development of the countryside. It seems most of them did not see or were not able to see the purpose of the changes in the social structure of the village, or especially the real intentions of the communists. Any manipulative ideological influence on the countryside is very harmful in its effect, and the consequences are difficult to remove even after a long period of time.This article deals with the current economic and agricultural transformations in Central Asia and demonstrates a risk for the insensitive procedures used in agricultural transformation to be repeated.
KEYWORDS
Collectivisation, USSR, Central Asia, agriculture transformation, economic transition.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 328.82 KB)
T. Maier
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
This article aims to use three quantitatively stated hypotheses to determine the reasons for the rise of microbreweries in the Czech Republic, whose numbers have been growing constantly since 1991. The explanations defined by the hypotheses are concentration growth, and thus the fall in the number of units of production in the industrial brewery segment, the quantitative impact of beer consumption, and finally again a quantitatively-defined demographic aspect. The results are summarised and elaborated on in the conclusion.
KEYWORDS
Microbrewery, Beer, Industrial Brewery, Demography, CAMRA.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 297.95 KB)
M. PechrováE. Vlašicová
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to estimate based on panel data from 2005–2012 the inefficiency and efficiency of biodynamic farms and compare it to the organic. Using stochastic frontier analysis and t-test we tested whether the biodynamic farms are less efficient in using their inputs than organic farms. Another concern was the impact of subsidies on the production and technical inefficiency of the farms.The estimated average inefficiency of biodynamic was 58.09 % and of organic farms 28.60 % and we found statistically significant differences between both groups. While the direct payments’ and support from EAFRD fund increased the production of both types of farms, and other subsidies’ decreased it, all type of subsidies decrease the technical inefficiency.The research is financed from grant No. 11110/1312/3160 - “Analýza vybraných ukazatelů biodynamického zemědělství – komparace ve světovém měřítku” of the IGA, FEM, CULS.
KEYWORDS
Biodynamic agriculture, organic agriculture, technical efficiency, stochastic frontier analysis.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 374.12 KB)
T. RatingerT. MedonosM. Hruška
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
Despite being considered as a key instrument of the agricultural development policy, the investment support has received only limited attention in the Czech economic literature. The objective of this paper is to assess economic effects of the measure 121 “Modernisation of Agricultural Holdings” of the RDP 2007-2013 on the Czech farms. A particular focus is on the distribution of the supports and differentiated impacts of the supports according to the production conditions and farm size. The counterfactual approach is adopted, deploying direct matching algorithm with the treatment of hereoscedasticity. We show significant benefits of the investment support in terms of business expansion (represented by Gross value added) and labour productivity improvements. Analysing the sample of applicants for Measure 121 we show that large farms get much larger support than smaller farms. By splitting the sample by natural conditions and by size we demonstrate that benefits are higher on farms in less favoured areas and on medium-size farms in both the absolute and relative terms. Investigating the changes in bank indebtedness we yield an indication that on average the support mobilised additional resources to finance the sector investment. However, there is no statistically significant increase of bank indebtedness on large farms due to investment support. In turn, it can be interpreted that deadweight is rather high on large farms, while on average the deadweight of the investment support programme is rather low. Thus, the programme can improve its social efficiency if it is targeted to small and medium size farms.
KEYWORDS
Counterfactual analysis, direct nearest neighbour matching, heteroscedasticity, deadweight, modernisation.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 622.96 KB)
H. ŘezbováA. BelováO. Škubna
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The main aim of this paper is to analyze the yield (t/ha) and the production costs of white (polarized) sugar and sugar beet in the main European producer countries in order to identify main development trends. The partial objectives of this study are: to analyse the production costs (variable costs) of sugar and sugar beet of the main European producers (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Czech Republic), to compare sugar beet yield of Tereos France and Tereos TTD a.s., to analyse sugar beet yield potential and their trends. The used methods are chain and basic indexes and regression analysis of time series/trend data - for predicting on next tree years. The main producers of sugar beet in the European Union (i.e. France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and Czech Republic) can not achieve goal of sugar yield 15t/ha while maintaining the amount of variable (direct) costs at 15 EUR/tone of sugar beet in the business year 2015/2016. Pieces of knowledge introduced in this paper resulted from solution of an institutional research intention MSM 6046070906 „Economics of resources of Czech agriculture and their efficient use in frame of multifunctional agri-food systems“.
KEYWORDS
Sugar beet, sugar production, yield potential, variable costs.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 481.38 KB)
M. SavariR. Ebrahimi-MaymandF. Mohammadi-Kanigolzar
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The overall aim of this study is to study the factors influencing the application of organic farming operations by farmers. The research‘s statistical population would consist of all the farmers in Divandarreh city (N=7931). Using the Cochran‘s sampling formula, 98 individuals were selected as the sample. In order to enhance the validity of findings, a total of 120 questionnaires were distributed using stratified random sampling, with proportionate and finally, 115 ones were completed and analyzed. The research’s main instrument was a questionnaire whose viability by a panel of experts and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach‘s alpha coefficient (α>0.7). Data analysis was carried out by the software SPSSwin18. The results showed that the study farmers apply organic farming operations at a low and moderate level. Additionally, the results indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between the application of organic farming operations with the variables of farming-work experience, literacy, use of communicative media, attitude to organic farming, knowledge and awareness of organic farming, participation in educational courses of extension, and use of educational publications. Moreover, the results of regression analysis showed that the three variables of use of information and communicative resources and channels, attitude to organic farming, and use of educational and extensional publications explained 61.2 percent of the changes related to the variance of the study‘s dependent variable (application of organic farming operations).
KEYWORDS
Sustainable Agriculture, Organic Farming, Soil Preservation, Divandarreh City.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 231.62 KB)
P. ŠimekM. StočesJ. VaněkJ. JarolímekJ. MasnerI. Hrbek
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The paper deals with the necessity of systemic solution for metadata providing by local archives into central repositories and its subsequent implementatiton by the Department of Information Technologies, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, for the needs of the agrarian WWW AGRIS portal. The system supports the OAI-PMH (Open Archive Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) protocol, several metadata formats and thesauri and meets the quality requirements: functionality, high level of reliability, applicability, sustainability and transferability. The SW application for the OAI-PMH requests’ servicing is run in the setting of the WWW Apache server using an efficient PHP framework Nette and database dibi layer.
KEYWORDS
Metadata, OAI-PMH, archive, agrarian portal, metadata distribution.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 1.45 MB)
T. Q. TuyenV. Van Huong
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
Using a dataset from a 2010 field survey involving 477 households, this paper has contributed to the literature by providing the first econometric evidence for the impacts of farmland loss (due to urbanization and industrialization) on household poverty in Hanoi‘s peri-urban areas. Factors affecting poverty were examined using a logit regression model. Our econometric results indicate that the one and two-year effects of farmland loss on poverty are not statistically significant. These results, therefore, confirm that farmland loss has had no impact on poverty in the short-term. This study also found that factors contributing to poverty reduction include households‘ education, access to credit, ownership of productive assets and participation in nonfarm activities before farmland loss. We propose some policy implications that can help households escape poverty and improve their welfare.
KEYWORDS
Farmland loss, poverty effects, household welfare, peri-urban areas.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 270.19 KB)
M. UlmanV. VostrovskýJ. Tyrychtr
No 4/2013, December
ABSTRACT
The paper briefly describes the current use of e-government services in the Czech Republic with focus on use of e-services in agriculture. The term agricultural e-government is defined here. There are several methods for evaluation of service and e-service quality however, no relevant method based on ISO software quality standards was found yet. Proposed CABAG (Communication between Agricultural Businesses and Government) method enables to evaluate quality of agricultural electronic services by means of ISO/IEC 25010 quality in use model giving list of quality characteristics, sub characteristics and quality requirements. The overall quality of agricultural e-service is represented as an aggregated result of expected level minus actual level of implementation for each particular requirement. The method can be used both for end users and providers (or owners) of e-services. Pieces of knowledge introduced in this paper resulted from solution of Internal Grant Agency (IGA) of the Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague grant number 20131038 “Analýza a návrh modelu hodnocení kvality e-služeb v sektoru zemědělství” (Analysis and design of quality evaluation model of e-services in agriculture).
KEYWORDS
Agricultural e-government, electronic service, public authority, quality in use, ISO SQuaRE, quality characteristics, CABAG.
VIEW MORE
PDF (.pdf, 669.34 KB)
