Differentiation of costs and returns in agricultural branches

Udovecz, Gábor – Béládi, Katalin – Kertész, Béla

Keywords: median costs and scatter, market dominating farms, investment return ratio, differentiation of branch effectiveness, arable land and animal numbers ratio

Detailed investigation of costs indicated a significant differentiation between production costs and effectiveness of agricultural enterprises. Objective and subjective factors lurk behind the differences.

- The lowest and highest cost of crop production on arable land varies in these days by a factor of 1.5 to 2. Variation around the mean for units producing at favourable costs is less than for those operating at higher costs.

The scatter of costs, ranging by a factor of 1.4 to 1.5, is less for animal products. One reason for this is the fact that plants depend much more than animals on weather conditions and soil characteristics in location. Another reason is that changes in animal keeping since the change of political regime or rather since having joined the EU have been much greater than those in plant production.

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