Analysis of the
work productivity in the agricultural exploitations under the conditions of
free market economy
Lecturer Simona Cristina COSTEA*, PhD
Candidate
Assistant
Nicoleta BUZILĂ, PhD Candidate
Abstract
The present work is aiming to undertake a thorough
investigation of the way the various economic phenomena as well as economic,
social and ecological processes in agriculture have to be handled, using the
work productivity as a central point.
Out of the many forms of expressing productivity, the most
important role is attributed to the work productivity because of the key role
of work as a resource within the other production factors.
In agriculture, due to its technical, economic, social and
organizational peculiarities, the factors affecting the work productivity need
a specific approach in order to consider their mutual influence as well as the
interaction between the natural and the economic conditions.
Keywords: agricultural
exploitations, productivity, workforce, market economy.
Introduction
The human resources in agriculture comprise the required labor
force needed to carry out the agricultural works and the one that provides for
the technical coordination, the organization and the administration of all the
agricultural resources. Concerning the agricultural production factors, one can
notice that human resources have a major impact upon the economic activity,
both as to quantity and especially as to quality.
The main
objective of the labor resource management is represented by the complete
utilization of the labor time in the context of efficiency, reflected by
increased indicators of labor productivity, by the earnings and the profit
level reached by farmers, labor efficiency being usually identified with labor
productivity.
The efficiency of labor force utilization in the context of
agricultural exploitations has a major importance when considering its share in
the production costs.
Capital and labor are two major production resources in
agriculture.
The rational utilization of agricultural labor resources
may raise several issues concerning the degree of occupancy and the growth in
the efficiency of agricultural labor.
Problem
definition
Labor is one of the main criteria in the organization of
the national economy divisions and the main indicator to measure the size of
economic units.
There are some agricultural characteristics of the economic
activity that might give specific features to labor productivity materialized
in the system of indicators utilized for the evaluation and the analysis of
labor productivity and also by the degree of labor productivity and its
development for a given period of time.
The economic, social and natural factors have the same
major share when approaching the concept of labor productivity.
Productivity could be defined as the relation of the
outcomes of a certain economic activity and the efforts made to accomplish
them.
Labor productivity is viewed as an economic category that
shows the materialized labor consumption, globally or partially, respectively
the performance of the labor resources and the output of the used capital.
The productivity of labor expressed in value can be
determined as the relation of the production values (the rate of turnover) and
the consumed time (days-worker, hours-worker etc). In the context of agricultural
exploitations, partial and global indicators of labor productivity could also
be expressed by means of sectors.
Specialists have still not come to an understanding in what
regards the methods of evaluating productivity in agriculture, due to the
several difficulties connected to the required information, the faults of the
utilized indicators and their regional and annual variation etc.
A much more
extensively used indicator for evaluating labor productivity in agriculture,
which enables the achievement of a country comparison, could be represented by “the
number of people fed by a farmer”.
For a better ascertaining of labor productivity one needs
to evaluate labor consumption within a production control to comprise different
categories of activities carried on by fulltime or part-time workers,
considering distinct regional norms, production systems and even production-oriented
companies. Another accurate method for determining labor productivity is by means
of additional value costing.
The labor productivity could be interpreted as the output
of the combination and the utilization of the production factors (represented
by the achieved production per production control) and also as their required
elements (represented by the expenses made on the production factors in order
to achieve a production control).
The labor productivity essentially shows – together with
some other important qualitative factors – the degree of economic efficiency of
the agricultural exploitations activity. The level and also the progress of the
labor productivity are influenced by: the technical level of production, the
preparation and training of the labor force, the management factors, the
quality of the working conditions, the natural conditions etc.
Specialists state that the process of agricultural growth
and development mainly depends on the owned capital of the division. This point
of view is valid particularly for the developing countries, where the capital
investments assigned for agriculture is very low. The growth of labor
productivity can be achieved not by means of spending an increased labor amount
but by means of its efficient utilization.
In agriculture, the gap between the labor and the
production time can surely generate the necessity of a more in-depth analysis
with a variety of direct, basic and complete indicators of labor productivity,
and other indirect, complementary or partial indicators. Therefore, when direct
and complete indicators are being used, labor productivity can be measured in
labor time, value and natural units, as well as in natural-conventional units.
Still, when indirect, complementary and partial indicators are being used, the
productivity of labor is measured in labor time units and sometimes in
natural-conventional units. Labor productivity can also be greatly influenced
by climate and weather conditions.
Summary
After several detailed studies and investigations in
agriculture, one can identify the fields, the organizational structures and the
produce characterized by an unfavorable evolution or a reduced growth in the
economic efficiency of the real labor. Hence, drastic measures for removing
deficiencies and ensuring a quick development of the labor productivity on the
entire agricultural exploitation are absolutely needed.
Thus, in order
to come up with a more thorough analysis on the matter, a factorial analysis of
the labor productivity is considered necessary.
The factorial
labor productivity analysis could be made for the estimated indicators by means
of the value relation production, for the entire activity, as well as for the
estimated indicators by means of the physical production per each produce. The
purpose of this analysis is established by the evaluation of its variation
level, by considering the elements which determined it, for as to identify the
internal reserves that will accelerate the development of the real labor
economic efficiency.
Therefore, the transition towards a well developed,
up-to-date agriculture has to be done by increasing the level of labor
productivity and its efficiency.
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