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The examination of the profitability and competitiveness regarding the energy plantations of woody plants in the region of Észak-Alföld
5-11Views:145Due to the decrease in the quantity of traditional energy sources, in the future an alternative energy production should be sought which provides minimum environmental burden and offers an opportunity to generate energy. The use of biomass provides another option to resolve this problem. The most important features of the biomass are that the quantity doesn’t decrease during conversions and are reproduced by natural processes. The main raw materials of the biomass are considered to be the energy plantations, which are economic in areas where the farmer, during the traditional production, can’t or with difficulties can cover the expenses, so that profitably sustainable cultivation branches can come to the forefront with less material and energy input. Those cases in which the cultivation of agricultural areas are not economically feasible, there is a possible utilization in our country which is the installation of plantations with energetic aim.
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Determinants of credit access of cocoa farmers
73-78Views:323Access to credit is one of the critical areas that are of prime interest to development practitioners, agribusiness entrepreneurs and agricultural economists, mainly access to credit by farmers in order to increase their production and also reduce poverty. This study sought to analyze the determinants of credit access among cocoa farmers in the Asunafo North of the Ahafo Region of Ghana. The multistage sampling procedure was used to collect data from 100 cocoa farmers with the aid of a questionnaire. Sources of credit, factors influencing access to credit, and constraints to credit were analyzed with the aid of descriptive statistics, multiple linear regression, and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance respectively. The results of multiple linear regression revealed that, age, marital status, education, experience, and family size were significant factors that influenced access to credit. The constraints analysis with the aid of Kendall’s coefficient of concordance showed that, high interest rate was highly ranked with a mean score of 1.93 whilst the need for a guarantor was least ranked with a mean score of 7.40. Based on the results, the study recommended that a policy aimed at expanding formal and semi-formal financial institutions credit portfolio to embrace cocoa farmers by finding alternative to collaterals and also reducing the interest rate will improve credit access with a positive externality effect of poverty reduction among cocoa farmers in the study area.
JEL Classification: Q14
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Liquid bio-fuels in Hungary: effects and contradictions
89-94Views:143The increase of living standard requires ever more energy, despite energy saving measures. Domestic growth was 100 PJ between 2000 and 2006, and 77% of the total utilization was importe (Hungarian Central Statistical Office, 2008).Sustainability was endangered not only in our energy and commerce policy. Our domestic natural conditions are suitable for plant production; however, the stagnation of the domestic population and decreasing livestock numbers restrict in land marketing. Therefore, significant surpluses from year to year had to be stored and sold abroad, and the fact that the interventional purchase of corn and the expected stringent new EU regulation of the sugar beet sector, make the strategic significance of these branches uncertain. The difficult marketing opportunities make the better utilization of our opportunities in producing liquid bio-fuels possible from marketing aspects, while environmental issues and realizing the EU directions enforce to do so in a longer term. Over the short term, agricultural and competitive aspects will determine its spread, which cause different effects in Europe in comparison with the developing countries. According to Nábrádi-Ficzeréné Nagymihály, 2008, one of the breaking points of Hungarian agriculture lies in the utilization of alternative energy sources. During the past period, many contradictory opinions came forward relating to economies, agricultural effects, food risks as well as the energetic and environmental efficiency of bio-fuels. One thing is certain: these fuels are already used today and their significance has been increasing. Although due to technological development, spread of new products and processes (cellulose-based bioethanol, bioethanol, biogas, hydrogen, biomethane) will obviously have to be expected in the future, at present biodiesel and bioethanol are determent among bio-fuels, thus I deal with these as well as their energetic and agricultural effects in my study.
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Aspects of the sustainable utilization of renewable energy sources
91-94Views:170The aim of this paper is to analyze the main approaches to sustainability and to present an alternative interpretation for the issues involved in the utilization of RES. The utilization technologies can be described by the average values of several technological parameters. Some significant parameters were chosen which are the most relevant for the issue of sustainability. The group of attributes was composed of these parameters in the analysis, which was conducted by the choice experiment (CE) methodology. The examination of each attributes’ influence on the individual’s preferences and choices was made possible by this method and the preferences of the relevant experts were determined. The weight of the attributes was defined by experts according to the importance of each attribute regarding RES-based technologies. The importance of sustainability attributes implies the significance of sustainability in the case of RES technologies, which thus highlights the characteristics of the more prosperous technological parameters regarding sustainable development.
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Commodity Indices Risk and Return Analysis Against Libor Benchmark
55-66Views:144This study analyze the risk and return characteristics of commodity index investments against the LIBOR benchmark. Commodity-based asset allocation strategies can be optimized by benchmarking the risk and return characteristics of commodity indices with LIBOR index rate. In this study, we have considered agriculture, energy, and precious metals commodity indices and LIBOR index to determine the risk and return characteristics using estimation techniques in terms of expected return, standard deviation, and geometric mean. We analyzed the publicly available daily market data from 10/9/2001 to 12/30/2016 for benchmarking commodity indices against LIBOR. S&P GSCI Agriculture Index (SGK), S&P GSCI Energy Index (SGJ), and S&P GSCI Precious Metals Index (SGP) are taken to represent each category of widely traded commodities in the regression analysis. Our study uses time series data based on daily prices. Alternative forecasting methodologies for time series analysis are used to cross-check the results. The forecasting techniques used are Holt-Winters Exponential Smoothing and ARIMA. This methodology predicts forecasts using smoothening parameters. The empirical research has shown that the risk of each of the commodity index that represents agriculture, energy, and precious metals sector is smaller compared to its return, whereas LIBOR based interest rate benchmark shows higher risk compared to its return in recession, non-recession and overall periods.
JEL Classification: C43, G13, G15
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