COMPARISON OF FARMS FOCUSING ON PLANT PRODUCTION IN THE PRODUCTION AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC AND LITHUANIA

Abstract

In the World there are almost 609 million farms and from it 90 % of farms are family farms. It means that family farm is typical form of farms in the World.  This kind of farms are occupying about 80 % of agricultural land and represent about 80 % of food production in the World. Small farms account for 84 % of all farms worldwide, but in terms of agricultural land, they operate only on 12 % of land, which represents about 36 % of the all food production. From the total number of farms, the largest ones (this represents 1 % of farms) operate on size of 70 % of the World's agricultural land.

The aim of this research is to calculate, what is the minimum size of family farm focused on plant production (with typical commodities for both countries) in the Republic of Lithuania and the Slovak Republic. We predict same production and economical condition in both countries. We calculate with situation, that the family farm will achieve minimum revenue for covering their costs and household expenditures.

In this paper are used the data on farmers from the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Lithuania from the data of business calculations by Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development of the Slovak Republic and Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania.

The presented paper calculates with average household expenditures. The valuse of household expenditures in the Slovak Republic are in value 12 795 Euro and average household expenditures in the Lithuania are in value 9 889 Euro. Data are used from both countries statistical offices from the year 2019. These expenditures are calculated for one family farm with 2 adults and 2 kids (as average).

The results of the paper proved that, according to the algorithm of an average farm focused on crop production, the farm size of 73.25 ha in the Slovak Republic and 73.01 ha in the Republic of Lithuania of agricultural land needs to have one family farm in each country.