外文翻译
原文
The competitiveness of agricultural export trade of Jilin Province Measurement and
Analysis
Material Source: Free Papers Down load Center Author:Lee Dong
Abstract: This paper considers the international competitiveness of agricultural production in Poland. Competitiveness was measured in terms of domestic resource cost (DRC) ratios for three farm sizes and eight commodities. The results highlight that for the period 1996 to 1998 Polish crop production was more internationally competitive than livestock farming. The most internationally competitive crops of tho analyzed were rapeed and potatoes. During the period, however, international competitiveness worned as international commodity prices fell. There is an inver relationship between DRCs and farm size. This is an important result as Polish production is relatively fragmented and the degree of structural change has been slow.
Acknowledgement
This rearch was conducted as part of component A of the EU Phare project P9704-01-03/04/13/17 which provided technical advice to the Ministerwo Rolnictwa Rozwoju Wsi(Ministry of Agriculture and Food Economy - MAFE) in shaping agricultural policies through economic analys.
1. INTRODUCTION
The ability of Polish agriculture to deal with rising competitive pressures from trade liberalization and future accession to the EU will have a bearing on the overall macroeconomic fortunes of the nation as a whole. The argufied ctor is a major component of the Polish economy, accounting for 12 per cent of total exports, 30 per cent of employment and 9 percent of GDP in 1998 (MAFE, 1999). Relative changes in competitiveness compared to international markets and existing EU members will have an effect on the development of agriculture and regional standards of living. This article considers two key questions: how internationally competitive is Polish agriculture? and how does price competitiveness vary between farm sizes? In
dealing with the questions the main methodological approach employed is the estimation of domestic resource costs (DRCs).
The paper is organized as follows: The next ction prents a brief overview of the structure of farm
ing in Poland and how this has evolved during transition. Section 3 outlines the methodology employed for analyzing competitiveness and the data ud in the analysis are discusd in ction 4. The DRC estimations are reported in ction 5 and the conclusion outlines for which agricultural products Poland is internationally competitive.
2. FARM STRUCTURES
Unlike most other CEECs, Poland did not extensively collectivize its agriculture under communism. By 1989, private plots and family farms accounted for approximately eighty percent of total agricultural area (TAA). State farms accounted for the remaining fifth of TAA.
The privatization of state farms began in 1991 with a special agency created to manage the process - the Agencja Wlasnosci Rolnej Skarbu Panstwa (AWRSP). The AWRSP has been responsible for administering and privatizing agricultural properties that belonged to the state as state owned farms or had been transferred to the State Land Fund in return for a pension (Milczarek, 2000). By the end of 1996 the Agency had taken over about 4.5 million hectares as well as accompanying fixed and current asts (Safin and Guba, 2000).
As the size of family farms has been historically small in Poland, estimating the number of farm holdi
ngs is problematic. The 1996 Polish Agricultural Census defined agricultural holdings as units with at least one hectare of land but recorded the number of units below this threshold.学信网学籍证明
On this basis, it was estimated that there were just over one million holdings with between 0.1 and 1.0 hectares of land, occupying less than 2.2 % of TAA. Just over two million holdings of greater than 1 hectare were recorded (Table 1). The majority of the holdings are of less than five hectares. At the same time, about 35.7% of the total agricultural area was cultivated by 8.4% of all farms, each with more than 15 hectares (Safin and Guba, 2000). Estimates by Szemberg (1999) suggest that only farms above 15 hectare can generate an income above the poverty line for one full-time person. Farms with less than five hectares are heavily dependent on other off-farm sources of employment or social curity benefits.
As recorded in Table 1, the number of farm holdings has steadily decread in
the 1990s, from over 2.1 million in 1990 to 1.99 million in 1998. This trend reflects a withdrawal of labour from agriculture in a period of falling farm incomes caud by a cost-price squeeze and fall in real government protection to agriculture. However, it should be noted that despite the worning terms of trade, the rate of withdrawal has been relatively slow: the number of holdings has declined
by about 0.7 per cent per annum. Looking at changes within size cohorts an interesting polarization is apparent. The number of 1 to 2 hectare holdings has rin from 378,300 to 449,500 since 1990 and the number of holdings with 15 hectares or more has also grown. In contrast, the number of medium sized farms (by Polish standards) has fallen considerably, especially in the 5 to 10 hectare category. A number of factors have led to this trend. First, land sales have en a reallocation of land to some larger producers especially where there has been a degree of foreign investment. Second, farmers' pensions are generous by Polish standards. To qualify for a farmer's pension an individual must farm more than one hectare. There is some evidence that in some cas the purcha of farm holdings or how they have been registered has been influenced by houhold strategies to qualify for farmers' pensions (Szemberg, 1999). This polarization has left Poland with a wide array of farm sizes which has potentially far reaching conquences for competitiveness and
a methodology for investigation is prented in the next ction.
3. METHODOLOGY
Domestic Resource Costs (DRCs)
The DRC ratio is a measure of the relative efficiency of domestic production. The DRC measures the
relative efficiency of domestic production in terms of its international cost competitiveness. The DRC compares the opportunity costs of domestic production to the value added it generates (Tsakok, 1990). The numerator is the sum of the costs of using domestic primary resources - land, labor and capital - and of non-traded inputs. The denominator is the value-added in border prices.
4. DATA SOURCES AND ASSUMPTIONS
In asssing the competitiveness of Polish agricultural products, eight main commodities are considered (bread wheat, rye, sugar beet, rapeed, potatoes, milk, beef and pork meat). The products were chon becau of their relative importance in Polish agricultural output. The estimation of DRCs utilized a number of data sources: the statistical yearbooks of Poland, agricultural statistical yearbook, statistical yearbook of foreign trade, custom office data, Agency for Agricultural Markets data and industry estimates, labor information on port charges and Instytut鸱枭
qq会员充值中心Ekonomiki Rolnictwa i Gospodarki Zywnosciowej (IERiGZ) farm level survey data.1 IERiGZ conduct a survey to just over 1,000 farms annually, collecting information on input and output prices, quantities and yields. In addition, information on the five largest farms analyzed is derived from questionnaires prepared by the authors.
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4.1 Output Prices
调查结果
Social prices for outputs and tradable inputs were taken as border prices (export / import parity prices), adjusted to the farm level by port and handling charges, transport, storage and maintenance costs (where appropriate). The adjusted border prices are en to be appropriate social prices for outputs and tradable inputs becau the price reprent the opportunity costs of domestic production. For non-traded inputs (factors of production) becau they are not normally traded internationally, adjusted border prices cannot be ud for deriving social prices. For the factors (land, labor and capital) their social price is said to be its value in a realistic alternative u (i.e. the social price of unskilled labor in agriculture is taken to be the average wage of unskilled labor in manufacturing). Import and export data was taken from Glówny Urzad Cel. Port charges are bad on information from the enterpri Port Ustka and the enterpri Port Gdansk. For products for which Poland is a net exporter, an b. export parity price was taken as the unadjusted reference price. For products for which Poland is a net importer, average c.i.f. import parity prices were ud.
Two problems may emerge with the lection of import and export parity prices. First, a problem may ari where the farm level good is not traded internationally (as with liquid milk).For Poland the expor
t parity price for skimmed milk powder (SMP) was taken (as Poland is a net exporter), which was adjusted back to farm level with an adjustment for the prevailing processing margin and conversion coefficient between raw milk and SMP. A cond issue may ari where the quality of the traded good differs from the quality of domestic production. This is not so much of an issue when the export parity price is taken as the lower quality will be reflected in lower unit values at the border. For import parity prices the issue however remains so that where the quality of Polish production was recognized as being lower than the imported equivalent, a suitable price adjustment was made.
4.2 Input Prices
Private input prices and quantities together with information on yields were taken from the IERiGZ surveys and the questionnaires to the largest five producers.
史玉柱脑白金The IERiGZ sample was divided into two groups: small farms (3-10 hectares) and medium sized farms (greater than 10 hectares (Table 2). The largest five farms were lected to give a flavor of the best performers in Poland but should not be treated as reprentative. All the private prices ud were average national prices, and no substantial analysis on a regional or sub-regional level was made.
Labor costs were bad on zloty values with different levels for skilled and unskilled laborite social value of unskilled labor employed in labour was taken to be the wage of unskilled workers in the industrial ctor. The social value of skilled labor was taken to be the average wage rate of skilled labor in industry. The opportunity cost of capital is bad on the obrved real interest rate obtainable following the approach detailed in Monke and Pearson (1989).
The social price of land should be measured as its rental value in the most profitable alternative agricultural u. For example, if rye production were to reprent the only alternative to wheat production, the social cost of land for the wheat activity would be reprented by the social profits (excluding land) from the production of rye (Monke and Pearson, 1989). However, a single clear alternative is often not evident as systems vary in terms of riskiness and the desirability of crop rotation. Following Pearson et al. (1987), an average of suitable commodity alternatives was taken for deriving social land prices, as social values would probably fall somewhere in this range.追求理想
4.3 Farm Structure
For all the products analyzed, the DRCs were estimated for the three farm size groups. Such degregation helps take into account the variations in input u, yields and other production costs b
etween farm sizes. For each size group, DRCs were estimated for the years 1996 to 1998. Table 3 records the average area devoted to particular commodities or average number of animals by the three farm types analyzed, as estimated by IERiGZ officials.
4.4 Marginal Production
The clor the DRC to 1, the more marginal is Poland’s comparative advantage or disadvantage in the production of that particular commodity, and enterpris in this range are most susceptible to changes in world market prices and exchange rates. In contrast, the further the DRC is below 1, the more robust the level of international comparative advantage. It should be noted that the DRCs are estimated here are farm size averages. Some producers, especially tho entering or leaving the ctor as marginal enterpris, may be considerably more or less efficient than the average,舍词语
