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Identification of environmental costs for agricultural companies – methodological questions and problems
177-183Views:78It is the consensus in the economic literature that corporate leaders do not know accurately the magnitude of environmental costs in their firms, and this lack of information is often a barrier to making environmentally-friendly decisions. For this reason, an important task of environmental accounting is identification of these costs, and a more realistic distribution of them among the products.
In this paper, we carried out identification of costs and expenditures for Hungarian agricultural companies.
We have dealt with this theme previously, but without detailing the related methodological questions. Detailed discussion is necessary because of the novelty of the subject (environmental accounting for agricultural firms).
Therefore, we elaborate the following questions: scope of determination of environmental costs and expenditures; methods for quantifying specific items; technique for their accounting. We also attempt to confront different viewpoints in the literature. Differences in accounting found between companies investigated are also presented.
The importance of our investigation is related to the significant increase in the number of environmental statutes that concern agricultural companies (e.g. rules for waste treatment, environmental taxation, introduction of charges and fees, regulation on liquid manure). Following these regulations puts an increasingly significant burden on the companies; therefore, the quantifications of environmental cost items has a growing
importance. -
The Natural, Social and Economic Conditions and Opportunities for Development of Balmazujvaros, Especially in the Case of the Co-operative Kvaliko
77-85Views:76Balmazujvaros as a settlement near Hortobagy has to cope with both advantages and disadvantages. Its natural and social conditions are mainly given, the agricultural characteristic is dominant, and the number of the employed is the highest in the agricultural firms and processing industry. Developing the third sector, including hosting, tourism, eco-tourism, thermal-tourism, may be an opportunity for the city. The subsidy for rural development relating to the SAPARD-programme may contribute to this, as the city is the member of the Association of Hajdu Towns.
The agriculture plays an important part in Balmazujvaros in which production and marketing of vegetables and fruits excel. Several farmers realised this opportunity and founded the Marketing Co-operative of Vegetable Producers in Eastern Hungary, that is the Kvaliko. This PO works in a Corporation form and is constantly developing, spreading and expanding its choice making use of the local natural, social and economic conditions and applications for realising its investments. This PO may set an example for the other entrepreneurs and farmers of Balmazujvaros to co-operate and it may be considered as an already realised opportunity. -
Experiences of Waste Management at Agricultural Enterprises in Hajdú-Bihar County
50-55Views:66The general tendency of the last few years has been that besides large agricultural Ltd.’s and firms, smaller agricultural enterprises also have to correspond to stricter environmental regulations.
This process suits the EU’s environmental and waste management regulations. Recently, manure, liquid manure and addle are registered as non hazardous agricultural waste in waste management in Hungary.
In the case of the amount of these wastes is larger than 200 t/year, one has to make an individual waste management plan.
Accordingly, several small agricultural enterprises have to make individual waste management plants in Hajdú-Bihar County.
This article is based on the results of these companies experiences. -
Application of environmental accounting tools for agricultural companies
60-68Views:74Today there is an ever stronger requirement for companies to consider the environmental aspects of their operation. The incorporation of these aspects into the economic practise of agricultural firms in our country is still in its infancy and, moreover, it usually follows from outside coercion (legal regulation) rather than voluntary behaviour.
Consequently, in the Hungarian agrar-economics – contrary to the example of Western Europe – the application of environmental accounting in agriculture is a barely researched subject; this has been so even though the environmental policy of companies can be made more conscious by adding an environmental dimension to the organizational information systems.
The aim of our investigation is two-fold. The first goal is to form a method that quantifies the environmental load of companies, is capable of comparing environmental performance of companies with different sizes, and takes into account the specific attributes of agriculture as well. The second is to apply this method in practice, to prove that estimating the environmental load of companies is possible by processing already available data (fiscal, accounting and statistical) using new concepts.
In this publication we present the joint application of three methods – each belonging to the toolset of environmental accounting – for two companies dealing with both crop and animal farming in the Pannonian region. The three methods are partly built upon each other and partly complementary. The company-level environmental balance is capable to show the relations between a given firm and its surrounding, but realistic comparison between environmental performance of different companies or periods is only possible by using specific index quantities. -
Strategic planning in agribusiness
23-27Views:129Agricultural businesses operate in a complex and dynamic environment, with many challenges and opportunities. It is therefore essential for these businesses to have a strategic plan. It is a critical process that helps businesses navigate in a complex and uncertain environment and achieve long-term goals and objectives. In this article, we have conducted a bibliometric analysis of academic journals to investigate the extent to which strategic planning is a researched topic in agribusiness enterprises. We found that there is no concentrated research, with only three keywords appearing in the literature with at least five repetitions. Even of the two repetitions, only 22 were found. The clustering of keywords helps to identify research directions. The results of a survey of 134 enterprises were then presented. The majority of enterprises do not have a long-term plan or even a written vision. We found that SWOT analysis is still the most common planning method among the companies surveyed. It was also found that there is no difference between industries in this respect. Significant differences were only found in relation to company size, with all large companies having a strategic plan and the vast majority of SMEs not. Only 17 out of 132 firms have a plan longer than three years, and 32 do not have any plan at all. Strategic planning can help to address many of the challenges in the agribusiness area, and it is therefore proposed to improve the proportion of firms planning through knowledge transfer.
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Validation of the competence profile of agri-environmental engineering bachelor course
63-71Views:149As member of the European Union, the development if the Hungarian agriculture is determined by the Common Agricultural Policy. After the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2003, the environmental protection has got a crucial function. The constant changing role of agriculture has reacted students in higher education. For firms connected to agriculture, human resource management based on competency has an important role in custody of competitiveness. One of the most important goals of firms is to supply the demands of their economic partners. To make it successfully, highly qualified human resource is required. The quality of human resource is determined not only by its qualification, language skills, professional experience, and practise, but extant competencies that can also be developed. To choose the expectant employee, it is not enough for them to have intelligence and proficiency; it is also decisive to examine their particular competencies. All of these will define the employee’s
achievement that will definitely contribute to the success of the enterprise. Basically, closer cooperation is needed between higher education institutions and employers to achieve this goal. At the same time, the higher education institutions can revise their training systems considering the actual requirements of labour market, and accordingly, they can form syllabus in a way to train auspicious experts. In this article examination of the requirements of labour market for graduates from agri-environmental engineering bachelor course is presented. -
Analysis of human factors in wiev of safety at some agricultural companies in Hajdú-Bihar county
109-115Views:64The author examined the human social influence factors of the occupational safety and health and number of workers at thirteen different agricultural firms. He’d measured at these enterprises the demographic characteristics and the risk sensibility of farmlabourers at scopes of activities and some related occupational safety and health attitudes from the psychosocial factors. He used questionnaire and personal guided interviews and methodical examinations. He used seven graded Likert-scale (-3...0...+3) (Malhotra, 2005) for qualification of answers. He established that selection by the leaders don’t prefer the special skills. He stated that the examined farm-labourers have got a low risk sensibility, but the statistics of the accidents not certifies it. With the occupational safety and health related attitudes influence the relation to the occupational safety and health, and to comply with OSH rules. It was established that the rate of quasi-accidents is relative high at agricultural workers.
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Cross-Sectional Examination of Agricultural Firms in Relation to the Leaders’ Attitude
261-269Views:30As a PhD student at the Management Department of Debrecen University my project was to find examine circumstances of agricultural business entities in connection with structural, social and economic changes. This topic is integral part of the research program „Functional Study of Business-Management”, specified the topic „Structural Management Researches”.
My setting of objectives were to find any connection between changes and attitude of leaders. I tried to explore the direction, tightness and tendencies of these relations, to choose some special management-method, which ones are much more succesfull than the other ones during the change-managing process. The base of my experiences are the results of special questionnaires, which were sent to several member of different type of enterprises relating to agricultural activity. -
Development of an Agricultural Soil Information System
60-63Views:68Since the development of remote sensing nearly 60 years ago, there have been many applications for agriculture. Some have proved effective, while others have not succeeded in assisting farmers with problem solving. Recent advances in the spatial, spectral and temporal resolution of remote sensing as well as potential positive changes in cost and availability of remotely sensed data may make it a profitable tool for more farmers. The target area of my research program is the fields cultivated by Kasz-Coop Ltd. considering that this firm is one of the main agricultural firms in the region and its cultivated fields are quite heterogeneous.