Department of Economics and Economic Policy in Agribusiness, Faculty of Economics, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poznan, Poland.
PLoS One. 2021 May 7;16(5):e0251394. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251394. eCollection 2021.
Farms need to invest in order to earn incomes and maintain their competitive edge. However, the scale and extent of investments must be aligned with resources of other productive inputs, primarily including land, because otherwise there is risk of overinvestment. Since 2004, Central and Eastern European countries have been provided with access to investment support programs; these are non-repayable aid funds which can potentially lead to overinvestment issues. Therefore, this paper attempts to answer the question on the scale of overinvestment in the countries covered. This is all the more important since that problem has rarely been addressed in economic and agricultural research. The study presented in this paper is unique in that the research tasks are based on unpublished Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) microdata for 5839 selected Central and Eastern European farms provided by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI). Based on variables relating to the amount of productive inputs and production volumes, the authors developed their own typology of farms which includes the following categories: optimum investment levels (the growth rate of labor productivity is greater than growth in the assets-to-land ratio); relative overinvestment (while labor productivity grows, it does so at a slower rate than the assets-to-land ratio); absolute overinvestment (labor productivity declines while the assets-to-land ratio grows); underinvestment (decline in both labor productivity and the assets-to-land ratio). The authors demonstrated that members of the 'absolute overinvestment' group made flagrant mistakes in investment planning and implementation, whereas members of the 'relative overinvestment' group did record an improvement in labor productivity which ultimately can be considered a positive outcome. Underinvested farms were a very small minority in each country. In addition to filling a gap in the methodology for determining agricultural overinvestment, this paper also indicates the scale of that issue in Central and Eastern European countries. This study may be of importance both to farms (as guidelines for investment planning) and to agricultural policymakers who develop investment support programs.
农场需要投资以获得收入并保持竞争力。然而，投资的规模和程度必须与其他生产投入的资源（主要是土地）相匹配，否则存在过度投资的风险。自 2004 年以来，中东欧国家获得了投资支持计划的准入机会；这些是无需偿还的援助资金，可能会导致过度投资问题。因此，本文试图回答所涵盖国家过度投资规模的问题。由于该问题在经济和农业研究中很少被提及，因此这一点尤为重要。本文的研究具有独特性，因为研究任务是基于欧洲委员会农业和农村发展总局（DG AGRI）提供的未公开的农场会计数据网络（FADN）微观数据为 5839 个选定的中东欧农场而制定的。基于与生产投入量和产量相关的变量，作者开发了自己的农场类型学，其中包括以下类别：最佳投资水平（劳动生产率的增长率大于资产与土地比率的增长率）；相对过度投资（尽管劳动生产率在增长，但增长速度低于资产与土地比率）；绝对过度投资（劳动生产率下降而资产与土地比率增长）；投资不足（劳动生产率和资产与土地比率均下降）。作者表明，“绝对过度投资”组的成员在投资规划和实施方面犯了明显的错误，而“相对过度投资”组的成员确实记录了劳动生产率的提高，最终可以被认为是一个积极的结果。每个国家的投资不足农场都是极少数。除了填补确定农业过度投资方法的空白外，本文还指出了中东欧国家的该问题的规模。本研究对农场（作为投资规划指南）和制定投资支持计划的农业政策制定者都可能具有重要意义。
