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• Mitigation activities to reduce emission of agricultural greenhouse gases in Hungary

  115-119

  János Lazányi

  Views:

  310

  Pressure on natural resources and the global environment have been identified as the most important challenges to maintain prosperity and improve environmental care. Agriculture is responsible for only a small proportion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, but the sector is more closely associated with emissions of other greenhouse gases such as methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O). The global warming potential of agricultural activities defined as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in CO2 equivalents is relatively low in Hungary, when calculated per land area. However this difference decline, when a GHG emission is calculated per product unit, as yields are lower then in West European countries. Environmental load caused by agriculture is also low in Hungary, where increasing part of EU resources are used for the long-term preservation of natural resources and for the raising of awareness of sustainable farming. The strength of the environmental situation of Hungary, consist of several elements, such as the rich bio-diversity, the significant size of territories falling under natural protection, the extent and importance of forests and the low environmental load from crop production. Among the weaknesses the nitrate load of the animal husbandry farms, the increasing water and wind erosion, the soil compaction and degradation have to be taken into consideration. Climate change has high risk potential and the mitigation activities of the New Hungary Rural Development Programme (HRDP) are investigated in this paper with the aim to increase mitigation activities in rural area and reduce the causes of climate change.

   

• Agricultural outsourcing: A comparison between the Netherlands and Japan

  29-33

  Masayo Igata

  Astrid Hendriksen

  Wim Heijman

  Views:

  790

  Outsourcing may well be a tool for increasing the efficiency of Japanese agriculture. However, outsourcing is not frequently used by Japanese farmers in their day-to-day management. This has resulted in a weakly developed market for agricultural contracting services. In order to take a closer look at the reasons for making use of outsourcing, a comparative study was carried out between the agricultural contracting sector in Japan and that in the Netherlands, where agricultural outsourcing is a regular practice. In the Netherlands, especially small, diversified farms that lack sufficient labour tend to outsource agricultural work; in Japan, the situation is far less clear. Cultural factors possibly play an important role.