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Examination of pig farm technology by computer simulation
25-29Views:308Agricultural production is among the riskiest production activities. Similarly to other branches of agriculture in animal breeding the finished product is the result of complex procedures. The biological technological procedure, the creation of the product is affected by an outstanding number of environmental factors which also cause uncertainties. In the North Great Plain Region of Hungary, sows, gilts and slaughter pigs are produced on a corporate farm. The reliable operation data of this company provide a stable basis for and estimating future costs and revenue and their distributions. Monte Carlo methods are one of the generally accepted tools for modeling risks. The significant independent variables, their ranges and probability distributions, and the correlation between them were inputs to the model. The values of the variables were produced using a random number generator. The computer simulation was performed using @Ris (PalisadeCorporation) software. The study concentrates on the factors affecting the number of off spring (piglets). Model inputs were the mating, mortality and farrowing rates; the costs and the income values based on these rates have been analysed as the output data of the model.
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Food security assessment and consumption pattern in rural households in Ogun State, Nigeria
15-20Views:335The problem of nutrition security is getting worse in Africa, due to increasing population growth and poor progress in efforts directed at reducing food insecurity in many countries in the continent. The paper undertook an assessment of the food security situation and food consumption pattern in rural households in Ogun state, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 260 rural households from whom data were collected through structured questionnaire. The tools of analysis were descriptive statistics and food security index. The former described the consumption pattern, and households’ sources of food availability, while the latter was used to analyse the food security situation. The result of the rural households’ consumption pattern reveals that the rural households derived more of their energy from carbohydrates at the expense of other classes of food items. The result also shows that majority (75.5%) obtained their food through their own production and supplemented same with food purchased from the market to meet up with their family needs. Based on the recommended daily calorie intake (R) of 2,470 kcal, 59.6% of the rural households were food insecure while 40.4% were food secure. The calculated head count ratio (H) for the food insecure households was 0.6, confirming that almost 60% of households in the study area were food insecure. For secure households, the head count ratio (H) was 0.4, further confirming that only about 40% of households in the study area were food secure. The shortfall index and surplus index were 0.2787 and 0.3498 respectively, meaning that the energy requirement was less by about 27 percent and in excess of 34 percent for the food insecure and food secure households. The paper recommends that while enhancing production of arable crops - roots, tubers and cereals, a sensible balance of tilting towards meeting the requirements in the consumption of animal protein/legume, fats/oils, fruits and vegetables must be maintained to ensure food security. This policy thrust could be enhanced through mass education.
JEL code: R20
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Opportunities for the inclusion of less-favoured areas in the Northern Great Plain region
59-60Views:351Agricultural economics and its part, rural economics plays a determining role in Hungary. Most rural families perform self-sufficient farm production for a living. In the present conditions of infrastructure and human resources, there are regions where the only rural alternative for employment is agriculture. There are significant differences among the regions considering natural resources and equipment available for farm production, and these differences affect potential income (Vöröset al. 1999). The primary aim of the European Union is to reduce such differences among the regions.The new research program of the University of Debrecen tackles the fundamental questions of regional development through the research and management of social asymmetries by using economic and other relevant tools. This program also provides suggestions for facilitating the development of less-favoured areas.
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Using sustainable development tools for solving property rights in Montenegro
127-131Views:263In recent months Montenegro has been faced with serious budget problems , one proposed solution of which has been to reduce the number of employees in state administration. Additionally, the costs of living are above the disposable budget of most households, in particular the high cost of electricity. While the government warns about a lack of electricity, the citizens are hardly in the position to cover these costs. Montenegro is dealing with the double challenge of inefficient use of space (the country features over 100,000 illegal homes)(I don’t understand the link between inefficient use of space and illegal homes) and inefficient energy use (Montenegro needs an average of 8.5 times more energy per unit produced than an average EU country). How can these problems be solved in a way which pleases both sides? In this paper, an approach is presented which links the solving of the problem of illegal construction with increasing the level of energy efficiency in households, businesses and other facilities. There is a model developed by UNDP Montenegro – an integrated policy solution to the double challenge of providing energy efficiency measures to incentivise households to legalise their homes. The legalisation of illegal buildings by the introduction of mandatory energy efficiency measures in them may at the same time result in an increase of revenue to the central and local budgets, the reduction of negative impacts on the environment, an increase in employment, the engagement of the economy, a reduction of electricity consumption and thereby to reduce the need to import electricity, and ultimately the increased welfare of the population.
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Management issues of cropping with sorghum in the production structure - a case study of Hungary
Views:543One of the goals of the developments is to improve the efficiency of the activity by making the currently used traditional production structure more flexible and by making the necessary changes to the technology in the case of farmers with large agricultural land, having necessary machinery and equipments required. Farms with larger arables land are able to offset the effects of changes affecting efficacy and profitability. The main sector of Hungarian agriculture is crop production, so performance is largely determined by the annual output of the crop production sector and the price development of crop products. In the course of our analytical work, we defined a farm of 2100 hectares, for which we examined crop production, crop machinery and economic aspects. From the enterprise data, farm level results compiled according to the crop structure were calculated. Sorghum is suitable for replacing corn in the crop rotation in areas with unfavorable conditions, so a stably growing crop can be added to the crop rotation of autumn ears of corn, rape, and sunflower, instead of corn. It does not hinder the machinery modernization efforts either, since the precision tools and developments already started in corn production can be used well, and it does not require a special equipment park. At the same time, in light of the increasingly frequent negative climatic effects, sorghum’s integration into the plant production structure is encouraging, because we have to count on 3-4 drought years in a decade. Based on our analysis, the inclusion of sorghum in the crop structure does not significantly reduce the available income, which is acceptable in the given economic environment. However, its stability can significantly contribute to improving the resilience of farming, especially in comparison with corn.
JEL Code: Q12
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Responsible Behavior and Environmental Protection – in Case of Football Clubs
64-74Views:955There has been a hotspot in sports industry these days that is becoming more and more wide-spread in sports organizations and among managers, namely CSR, that is corporate social responsibility. In the life of geographical regions, towns or villages, professional football clubs play a crucial role. Consequently, clubs tend to take responsibility for these communities in return for their support: whether it is the local population or the authorities, other businesses or the environment, they are ready to stand up for good causes. Nowadays sports centres with their regular events have a significant effect on the environment either regionally or globally. That is the reason why it has become vital in the management of sports facilities to respect environmental principles when designing and using sports facilities and to avoid producing pollution that could harm and deteriorate the environment. The aim of our study was on the one hand, to present the definitional and theoretical evolution of CSR, than the CSR concept in sport, special regard to environmental protection. On the other hand, to analyze what kind of CSR related issues do football clubs (Real Madrid C. F. – RM, Borussia Dortmund – BVB) and how they are addressing issues of environmental sustainability in the context of CSR. According to RM and BVB, we can say that they really try to do efforts to responsible behavior and environmental protection. They have special respect for the society and took big step to use different environmental management tools. It was easy to find information, reports and case studies about these activities.
JEL Classification: M14
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The importance of logic planning in case of IT and innovation projects
15-20Views:323In case of using methodology of project planning, in the first step we had to create a “good” logic network. We had to determine the successors and predecessors of the tasks. However, usually successors and predecessors proceed from the technology, sometimes (especially in case of IT and innovation projects) these relations between tasks are not explicit. In case of projects, especially IT and innovation projects, one of the most critical points of view is the phase of logic planning. However, it is a very important phase, only slightly supported by any kind of Project Management tools. Our goal was to support the logic planning phase. In our paper a new planning method, namely SNPM (Stochastic Network Planning Method) is introduced through some practical applications. SNPM can determine all feasible solutions with the help of stochastic variables and can also take into consideration all possible precedents. The parameters of logic relations can be changed if the impacts on the project change. With this method the most probable project scenario can be determined taking into account costs and resource demands.
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Some uses, underuses, and misuses of the findings of disparities between people’s valuations of gains and losses
7-13Views:352The well-known behavioural finding that losses have a greater impact on people’s well-being than gains, has important implications for the study of individual and collective choices, as well as the ways in which analyses are carried out -- many more than have yet been seriously considered. It also has many for analysts’ use of such tools as price elasticities, discount rates, value of statistical lives, risk analysis, and the like. A greater recognition of the behavioral findings would likely lead to reductions of the biases in many present analyses.
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Multifunctionality of agriculture, public policies and scientific evidences: Some critical issues of contemporary controversies
53-58Views:284Various theoretical models of public policy analysis are used to treat situations of decision-making in which public deciders have to take into account the multifunctionality of agriculture. For some, science-society relations are not really problematical. Others acknowledge the current attempts of these policy-makers to find adequate scientific knowledge, and the difficulties they encounter. These difficulties stem partly from the very content of knowledge produced by research. Could other modes of production be more efficient? The status of the knowledge produced by these approaches is a subject of debate. Bridging the divide between science and policy more effectively is not only a question of knowledge brokerage.Accessibility and reliability of the existing evidences are also problems to be addressed. The debates around evidence-based practices may provide some landmarks in this new situation although they also emphasize the limits of the tools that can be built for this purpose.
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THE ROLE OF TRADITIONAL FARM RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES ON REDUCING CREDIT RISK IN TANZANIA AGRICULTURAL LENDING
Views:137Agricultural financing enhances food security, job creation, a transition from subsistence to commerce farming, and strengthens the overall economy. However, due to unfavorable weather and market conditions there is limited financing directed towards agriculture especially in developing countries. Despite smallholder farmers' high adoption rate of traditional risk management strategies to minimize these risks, little has been done to examine its moderating role on the relationship between agricultural risks and credit risks. Thus, this study examines the role of farm business risk management strategies on minimizing the influences of production and market risk on smallholder farmers loan repayment capacity. The quantitative study used pooled cross-sectional data from a Tanzanian commercial bank from 2019 to 2021, covering 1,277 smallholder farmers from different administrative regions. Using binary interaction effect logistic regression analysis model, the study's results indicate that irrigation, mechanization, and off-farm diversification significantly minimizes the effects of production and market risk amongst smallholder farmers in Tanzania, an indication that traditional risk management strategies are effective tools amongst smallholder farmers. On the contrary, on-farm diversification strengthens the influence of production and market risk on loan repayment amongst the smallholder farmers in Tanzania, the results that can be influenced by a number of factors, including poor diversification knowledge among smallholder farmers. In light of these findings, the study recommends that policy makers and other development partners to develop agricultural infrastructure and provide more extension agents that can educate smallholder farmers on the best practices on traditional risk management.
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Diversification strategies and their impact on farm performance
57-61Views:337The objective of this study is to identify factors determining the economic performance of agricultural holdings in Italy, with specific attention to the impact of the adoption of on-farm diversification strategies, namely income diversification and product differentiation. The adoption of these kinds of strategies has been increasingly recognised as a viable business option in agriculture as they allow better allocation of farm resources and an increase in the quota of value added retained on farms and therefore not passed on to other agents operating at the end of the food supply chain. By using a panel of professional Italian farms over the time period of 2003-2009, we estimate random effect, ordinary least square and quantile regression models to estimate the impact of income diversification and product differentiation strategies on the levels of farm income per unit of labour income. Our findings show that scale economies are important positive determinants of farm economic performance. On the contrary, when the family play an important role in the farm business, economic performance is worse. Finally, we do not find evidence of a statistically significant impact of the adoption of income diversification and product differentiation strategies. This latter result may be interpreted as a signal that farms use these strategies as risk management tools rather than as income increasing ones.
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Measuring efficiency of intellectual capital in agriculture sector of Vojvodina
25-31Views:317During three-hundred-year history of the market economy, the main sources of wealth creation have changed from the natural resources (mainly land and relatively unskilled labor with the exception of the master craftsman), tangible material assets (buildings, machinery and equipment, funds) to intangible assets (knowledge and information of all types) that may be contained in the people, organizations, or physical resources. In the later period of the twentieth century, science has acquired the features of direct production force. The term direct implies that unlike the relationship which existed between science and production in the IXX century, where scientific advances was incorporated through the physical labor in the tools, which, in turn, created new value through the physical labor, the relationship between science and production has become all direct, immediate, because the scientific advances allowed the funds to be produced with less labor and allowed funds itself to become "smarter" and as such to require less human intervention and human physical labor in the final production process.As a result, the need for physical labor continuously declined with time, and the application of labor is moved from direct production to processes of preparing and organizing production. Also, a large part of today's knowledge that is used in production is not embodied in machinery, and the effects of this are immense.
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THE CLUSTERS OF TELEMEDICINE (THE SCOPE AND MAIN ECONOMIC ISSUES OF TELEMEDICINE)
Views:234The introduction of telemedicine tools was motivated by the need to reduce the risk of infection. This paper deals with the main areas of telemedicine. It presents a definition of telemedicine and its most typical manifestations. It discusses the role of health in economic growth. It also discusses the legislative background to telemedicine. It analyses the two major clusters of telemedicine, primary health care and VR-based care. Primary care includes online rounds, remote examinations, remote diagnostics, remote intervention, remote monitoring and surveillance. The second cluster, based on virtual reality, already includes elements such as surgical interventions, pain relief, attitude modelling, rehabilitation, anxiety and phobia management, eating disorders management, relaxation, medical care in disaster situations. A separate chapter of the study deals with the economic indicators and revenues of telemedicine. Finally, the author identifies possible areas for further research (Craig J. – Patterson V., 2005).
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The role of social media in gastronomy industry
95-103Views:2049Considering the rapidly changing business environment, staying competitive is a key issue and challenge for companies in the 21st century. The criteria of a company’s success and competitiveness is the changing behavior of the different economic actors and its influence. Through the information society came to the fore, the use of diverse information technology tools and methods has become a significant influence factor in terms of the entrepreneurs or company management and also the customers or other partners. Due to the rapid expansion of new technology developments, the role and importance of social media is continuously increasing. Also statistics show that one of the most regularly used IT tool is the social media and the different web 2.0 applications. The current study is intended to provide a better understanding how social media can emphasize the competitiveness of companies and format the consumer behavior in a special sector – the rapidly developing gastronomy industry. This paper presents an empirical research about the role of social media in the above mentioned industry based on the primary data which are gathered through a survey performed in Hungary. Beyond the empirical results presented, the paper also aims to provide some recommendations for research methodology – based on the international literature review and the Authors’ own experiences – both in gastronomy industry’s and customers’ point of view. Through the analysis the research hypotheses were examined and the most important correlations were identified between the survey results and the Authors’ initial supposition.
JEL Code: D83, L83, M31, Z33
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