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Green networks: Innovative capacity of SMEs in the Dutch greenhouse horticulture industry
43-50Views:165The Dutch greenhouse horticulture industry is characterized by world leadership in high-tech innovation. The dynamics of this playing field are innovation in production systems and automation, reduction in energy consumption and sharing limited space. However, international competitive advantage of the industry is under pressure and sustainable growth of individual enterprises is no longer a certainty. The sector’s ambition is to innovate better and grow faster than the competition in the rest of the world. Realizing this ambition requires strengthening the knowledge base, stimulating entrepreneurship, innovation (not just technological, but especially business process innovation). It also requires educating and professionalizing people. However, knowledge transfer in this industry is often fragmented and innovation through horizontal and vertical collaboration throughout the value chain is limited. This paper focuses on the question: how can the grower and the supplier in the greenhouse horticulture chain gain competitive advantage through radical product and process innovation. The challenge lies in time- to-market, in customer relationship, in developing new product/market combinations and in innovative entrepreneurship. In this paper an innovation and entrepreneurial educational and research programme is introduced. The programme aims at strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration between enterprise, education and research. Using best practice examples, the paper illustrates how companies can realize growth and improve the innovative capacity of the organization as well as the individual by linking economic and social sustainability. The paper continues to show how participants of the program develop competencies by means of going through a learning cycle of single-loop, double-loop and triple loop learning: reduction of mistakes, change towards new concepts and improvement of the ability to learn. Finally, the paper illustrates the importance of combining enterprise, education and research in regional networks, with examples from the greenhouse horticulture sector. These networks generate economic growth and international competitiveness by acting as business accelerators.
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Potential impact of the European Green Agreement on EU and Hungarian crop production
Views:240European arable farming, including Hungarian arable farming, faces a huge dilemma: how to contribute to and maintain the global food supply while reducing greenhouse gas emissions while main taining biodiversity, but reducing inputs that are potentially damaging to society and the environment while ensuring that no more land is taken out of production? Not to mention that the increasingly urgent need to tackle climate change is also placing additional demands on EU agricultural decision-makers. Under the European Green Deal (GD), the 'From Farm to Fork' (F2F) strategy will help achieve climate neutrality by 2050, with a target of a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Achieving this will require significant changes in food production, a shift in crop health strategies and accelerated innovation in the agricultural sector. The study addresses these issues. Our first hypothesis (A1) is that the GD and F2F strategies can be implemented without problems and without losses. Our second assumption (A2) is that the know-how solutions and the technological conditions for precision agriculture that are already available exist, and that all of these already justify the feasibility of A1. In order to prove this, we have reviewed recent and up-to-date literature on DG and F2F. For A1, we found that there are pro and con findings in the literature. However, the summary finding is not positive. The conclusion of the studies, based on data calculations, is that EU agriculture faces huge additional costs if it is to maintain production and reduce environmental pressures. Their calculations suggest that more people will be disadvantaged by the decisions, and that millions of euros could be lost to the public. However, the article also shows that there are many cases where positive results can be achieved even with reduced chemical use. Facts and figures from international and Hungarian technological and know-how solutions and their trials at plant level show that the DG's objectives are already partially achievable. It has been established that the systematic use of precision technologies allows to increase the natural and at the same time the economic efficiency. In our work we have used the results of primary and recent secondary research. We have shown the downsides of GD, but also that with targeted support, the objectives of sustainability and GD can be approached. Changes in 2022, drastic price increases for inputs including fertilizers and pesticides, inflation at a 20-year high, energy prices spiraling out of control, and an almost unprecedented drought affecting crop production and horticulture, point to the need for a radical change in technology, thinking and regulation. And all this to ensure that there is enough affordable food in Hungary, that there are export products within and outside the Community, and that those working in agriculture have a decent living.
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New tools and opportunities in growth and climate friendly greening for small and medium enterprises in the European Union
25-31Views:182The role of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is unquestionable in the European economies, while financial opportunities are still inadequate for them. The more than 20 million SMEs play a significant role in European economic growth, innovation and job creation. According to the latest EC Annual Report , SMEs are accounting for 99% of all non-financial enterprises, employing 88.8 million people and generating almost EUR 3.7 tn in added value for our economy. Despite the fact that there is plenty of EU funding available for these SMEs, for certain reasons these funds hardly reach them. But we have to see that the EU supports SMEs by various way, e.g. by grants, regulatory changes, financial instrument, direct funds. On the other hand, SMEs and decision makers realised that the environmental sustainability has to be attached to the economic growth, therefore more and more tools are available for these enterprises. Over the last few years, public institutions, the market, the financial community and non-governmental associations have explicitly demanded that firms improve their environmental performance. One of the greatest opportunities might lay in the Climate- and Energy Strategy till 2030 as 20% of the EU budget is allocated to climate-related actions, however the easy access to finance is still a key question. Does the EU recognise the actual difficulties? Is there a systemic reason behind the absorption problems? Is the EU creating a more businessfriendly environment for SMEs, facilitating access to finance, stimulates the green and sustainable growth and improving access to new markets? The paper analyses the current European situation of the SMEs and the effectiveness of some new tools, which are specially targeting SMEs.
JEL classification: Q18
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Proposals for low-carbon agriculture production strategies between 2020 and 2030 in Hungary
5-15Views:309When viewed from the perspective of climate policy, agriculture as a separate sector is one of the most difficult development areas to assess. One of the reasons for this is the problem of the localization of greenhouse gas emitters, caused by the fact that production takes place in small or dispersed production units. The special circumstance that unit production takes place in complex interactive systems (food, feed, energy sources, main products, by-products, etc.) is yet another special factor, which in addition makes it significantly more difficult to measure and identify the GHGs they emit than if they were a uniform production plant. Additionally, there are few sectors outside agriculture where decision-makers encounter such strong opposition and lobby interests when developing limiting regulations. This stems from the fact that following World War II, European decision-makers and the Common Agricultural Policy elevated agriculture to a prominent role whose importance was indisputable. As a result, both climate policy and other measures that would result in any reduction of the priority of the sector are very difficult to implement, since the players involved always reason that limitations would restrict their competiveness and the security of their production. In addition, the uncertain nature of regulatory elements also poses a grave problem. As an example, the name of the sector itself – the LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) sector – shows that the strategy for reducing the greenhouse gasses emitted by the whole sector would be significantly different if these units were treated separately (agricultural land use, forest, not-cultivated areas). Taking the above into account, the present study aims to identify development directions that in turn allow those low-carbon development directions to be pinpointed within animal husbandry and plant production that have the greatest feasibility and can contribute to decreasing the GHG environmental load exerted by agriculture.
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Low-carbon innovation policy with the use of biorenewables in the transport sector until 2030
45-52Views:181The topic of the present study deals with the changes and future trends of the European Union’s climate policy. In addition, it studies the manner in which Hungary’s transport sector contributes to the success of the above. The general opinion of Hungarian climate policy is that the country has no need of any substantial climate policy measures, since it will be able to reach its emission reduction targets anyway. This is mostly true, because the basis year for the long term goals is around the middle/end of the 1980’s, when Hungary’s pollution indices were entirely different than today due to former large-scale industrial production. With the termination of these inefficient energy systems, Hungary has basically been “performing well” since the change in political system without taking any specific steps in the interest of doing so. The analysis of the commitments for the 2020-2030 climate policy planning period, which defined emissions commitments compared to 2005 GHG emissions levels, has also garnered similar political reactions in recent years. Thus, it is not the issue of decreasing GHG emissions but the degree to which possible emissions can be increased stemming from the conditions and characteristics of economic growth that is important from the aspect of economic policy. In 2005, the Hungarian transport sector’s emissions amounted to 11 million tons, which is equal to 1.2% of total EU emissions, meaning it does not significantly influence total transport emissions. However, the stakes are still high for developing a low GHG emission transport system, since that will decide whether Hungary can avoid those negative development tendencies that have plagued the majority of Western European transport systems. Can Budapest avoid the scourge of perpetual smog and traffic jams? Can it avert the immeasurable accumulation of externalities on the capital city’s public bypass roads caused by having road transport conduct goods shipping?
JEL classification: Q58
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