Review article
Equipping of Croatian Agricultural Households with Machinery and Equipment
Dubravko FILIPOVIĆ
Zoran GRGIĆ
Vjekoslav PAR
Miroslav TRATNIK
Abstract
An analysis of Croatian agricultural households' level of
equipment with machinery and equipment was conducted on
the basis of data provided in the Agricultural Census 2003. In
Croatia, agriculture is the primary or secondary economic
activity for 448.532 households and 1.485.647 people,
representing 33.5% of the total population. Croatian
agricultural households possess 1.162.612 ha of total
available land, which equates to 83.5% of the total
agricultural land in the nation. The average agricultural
household has 2,59 ha, from which 1,92 ha is used for
agricultural purposes, and the average surface of each parcel
is 0,45 ha. Our analysis of data indicated that a large
proportion of agricultural households does not have adequate
machinery and equipment; however, on a practical basis,
households that are well equipped don't have enough land
for rational use of machinery. Only 35.5% of households
have four-wheel tractors with an average power of 34,0 kW.
Aside from deficient households which have tractors, and
relatively low-powered ones, 7,35 kW of tractor power is used
per one hectare of cultivated land, which is much more than
fully developed countries in the world have. The most difficult
situation is the lack of irrigation equipment – only 2.1% of
households possess irrigation equipment and only 0.6% of
the land area is irrigated. The research effort and analysis
indicate that we should apply developed-European-country
models to determine rational use of modern machinery and
equipment for Croatian agricultural households.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
17858
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2005.
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