• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.325-332
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• 2022

The aim of this research is to use a conceptual model to experimentally evaluate the mediating impact of government financial and training support on structural social capital and non-financial performance of family farms. Questionnaires were used to collect data from family farms in Guangxi, China, from August 25^th to September 8^th, 2021. There were 759 valid responses, accounting for 94.99 percent of the total number of respondents. The scales' reliability and validity, and the research's mediating effects and hypotheses, are tested using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 26.0. The findings suggest that the impact of government financial assistance on family farms' non-financial performance cannot be substantiated. The intermediary chain connection of financial and training support, on the other hand, has a significant mediating effect between structural social capital and family farm non-financial performance. Direct financial assistance could be thought to encourage family farms to rely too much on funding, making them less competitive in market competition, innovation, and long-term operations. According to the conclusions of the study, government assistance to family farms could take a variety of forms, including providing diversified skills training programs in farming practices, managerial skills, and other areas.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.57-70
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• 2018

Farm succession is one of the most important events that substantially influence the viability of a farm business not only for a family farm operation, but also for a farm industry as a whole. This study aims to analyze the factors which affect the probability of existence of a successor, using the nationwide survey data. The probability of having a successor increases with the age of operator, the number of sons, the area under cultivation, organic farming, farm expansion plan, main crop and operator's attitude towards farm succession. Also this study investigates the succession plans of family farms having a successor and land disposal plans of family farms without a successor. 40% of farms having a successor have only vague succession plans and 34.7% of farms without a successor have a plan to apportion their land among their children. Based on these results, this study suggests the necessity of planning for farm succession and successors' agricultural training. In addition, measures for preventing from land fragmentation are needed for realization of effective usage of agricultural land.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.749-756
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• 2015

This study aims at identifying the characteristics of family-owner firms from the business studies and searching for the usefulness of the concept for the farming research. From the 1980s, there have been a lot of studies on family business which found out its different features in term of management characteristics. Exploring the concept of the family business, this tries to figure out any kind of similarities of the family farm concept which could be applied for the studies on identifying novel characteristics of contemporary family farms in capitalised societies.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.1326-1330
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• 2001

This study analyzed the lowest production cost and the greatest profit to be obtained from marketing hogs to determine the optimal operation scale for family-owned farrow-to-finish farms. Data were collected from 39 farrow-to-finish farms with 500 to 5,000 inventories for two consecutive years, and treated with GLM and quadratic regression models using the REG procedure. Analysis results indicated that farms capable of marketing 2,933 and 3,286 hogs annually had the lowest production cost and the greatest profit, respectively. Further analysis attributed the lowest production cost or the highest return in farms with an optimal scale of 3,000 to a higher survival rate of the herd, as well as lower expenses in veterinary medicine, labor, utilities and fuel, transportation, and depreciation. A similar feed conversion efficiency was observed for all the farms studied. Obviously, the cost efficiencies were associated with the economy of the operation scale of hog production until it reached 3,000 hogs marketed annually for a family-run unit. Beyond the optimal scale of 3,000 hogs, good stockmanship was more difficult to maintain and the herd management deteriorated as increasing mortality confirms. It is conclude that, unless advanced management is applied, the operation scale should not expand beyond 3,000 hogs.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.814-824
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• 2010

The objective of this research was to assess the effect of experience, education, record keeping, labor, and decision making on monthly milk yield per farm (MYF), monthly milk yield per cow (MYC), monthly milk revenue per farm (MRF), and monthly revenue per cow (MRC) of dairy farms supported by a private organization in Central Thailand. The dataset contained 34,082 monthly milk yield and revenue records collected from January 2004 to December 2008 on 497 farms, and information on individual farmer experience and education, record keeping, and decision making obtained with a questionnaire. Farmer experience categories were i) no experience, ii) one year, iii) two to five years, iv) six to ten years, v) eleven to fifteen years, vi) sixteen to twenty years, and vii) more than twenty years. Farmer education categories were i) no education or primary school, ii) high school, and iii) bachelor or higher degree. Record keeping categories were: i) no records and ii) kept records. Labor categories were: i) family, ii) hired people, and iii) family and hired people. Decision making categories were: i) decisions made by farmers themselves, ii) decisions made with help from government officials, and iii) decisions made with help from organization staff. The mixed linear model contained the fixed effects of year-season, farm location-farm size subclass, experience, education, record keeping, labor, and decision making on sire selection, and the random effects of farm and residual. Results showed that longer experience increased (p<0.05) monthly milk yield (MYF and MYC) and revenue (MRF and MRC). Farms that hired people produced the highest (p<0.05) monthly milk yield (MYF and MYC) and revenue (MRF and MRC), followed by farms that used family, and the lowest values were for farms that used both family and hired people. Better educated farmers produced more MYC and MRC (p<0.05) than lower educated farmers. Farms that kept records had higher MYF and MRF (p<0.05) than those without records. Although differences among farms were non-significant, farms that received help from the organization staff had higher monthly milk yield (MYF and MYC) and revenue (MRF and MRC) than those that decided by themselves or with help from government officials. These findings suggested that dairy farmers needed systematic training and continuous support to improve farm milk production and revenues in a sustainable manner.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.571-582
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• 1994

Three livestock/crop demonstration-cum-training farms have been established on plots of half, one and two acres, typical of the "Kandyan Forest Garden System" Vegetables, bananas, pepper, coffee, coconut and fruit trees are widely spaced, for intercropping with grass, and have been surrounded with live fences that also provide fodder for livestock to increase the family income. Each unit is operated by a selected employee and his family under a monthly incentive scheme based upon the gross margin. On these farms the technical parameters in dairying are better than elsewhere in the Mid-Country. Economic performance over 1985-1992 showed that dairying contributed most to the total gross margin of the half, one and two acre units, i.e. 31, 63 and 69%, respectively. Next came crops (29%, 37% and 19%), poultry (22%, 0% and 9%), and goats (18%, 0% and 3%). In the three farms the cash income per Sri Lankan Rupee spent was 1.5, 4.6 and 2.1, respectively. The overall ratio was 3.2 for dairying, 1.1 for poultry, 4.5 for goats and 9.9 for crops. Actual family labour in the three farms was 548, 548 and 639 days, compared to the 270, 330 and 440 days anticipated in the initial feasibility study. The average incentive payments, which were 20% (half acre), 61% (one acre) and 133% (two acres) of the parastatal salary of the employee, were only insufficient for the extra labour applied in the half acre unit. Dairying and goats proved to be attractive cash earners with a domestic fuel were important benefits. Poultry did little to improve farm income.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.79-94
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• 2023

This study aims at identifying the characteristics of various income earning activities conducted by small family farms, so-called pluriactivity, in Korea, Traditionally small farm households have been regarded in Korea as those who have not only very limited economic capability, but also very low status in rural society. However, in Europe, since the 1990s, there have been some researches found out the role of small farms in socio-economic development of rural regions. These tended to conclude that such various economic activities of small farms' may contribute to the development of rural region. Introducing the concept of pluriactivity from the European studies, this study carried out surveys and interviews with 38 small farm household in Chungnam region in terms of the fundamental reasons for pluriactivity and the impact on rural economies. The analysis revealed the main reason of pluriactivity could be the lack of income for family. Nevertheless, this study also identified another important reason of pluriactivity that small farms' desire to live in rural areas may drive them to do the pluriactivity. It may mean that farming could not be the main option for them to live in rural areas. In addition, it was confirmed that this pluriactivity has a positive impact on rural areas, such as landscape management, job creation, and cultural provision. Along with this, it was confirmed that there is a difference in pluriactivity characteristics according to age. It then necessary concludes that the rural development policy must consider the characteristics of farm households when they provide the support for farming and non-farming activities.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.152-157
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• 1983

This study was carried out to investigate changes in the quality and botanical composition of native pasture during the grazing period. The results obtained were as follows: 1. On all the farms, the total dry matter yield of native pasture was much higher in the October-cut than in the July-cut. 2. The crude protein content was higher in the July-cut than in the Oct.-cut, while the crude fiber content gave opposite results. There was the same tendency on all the farms. 3. When the six farms were compared, the highest crude protein content was found at Hawon and Haian farm, and cows on these farms showed the highest daily weight gain. Ohra farm had the lowest crude protein and the cows on this farm the lowest daily weight gain. 4. The botanical composition of the main species distributed was 58.1% Zoysia japonica, 16.4 Pteridum aquilinum, and 3.8% Miscanthus sinensis. In the case of family, 72.1% were Gramineae, 1.8% Leguminosae, and 16.4% Pteridacea. 5. According to botanical composition of a family, Hawon farm had the highest daily weight gain and the highest rate of Gramineae and Leguminosae. Ohra and Youngkang farms had the lowest weight gains, but the native grassland on these farms contained a high proportion of Pteridum which is toxic to cattle.

• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.1-8
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• 2016

The present study has aimed at analyzing the technical and scale efficiencies of credit utilization by the farmer-borrowers in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India. DEA approach was followed to analyze the credit utilization efficiency and to analyze the factors influencing the credit utilization efficiency, log-linear regression analysis was attempted. DEA analysis revealed that, the number of farmers operating at CRS are more in number in marginal farms (40%) followed by other (35%) and small (17.5%) farms. Regarding the number of farmers operating at VRS, small farmers dominate the scenario with 72.5 per cent followed by other (67.5%) and marginal (42.5%) farmers. With reference to scale efficiency, marginal farmers are in majority (52.5%) followed by other (47.5%) and small (25%) farmers. At the pooled level, 26.7 per cent of the farmers are being operated at CRS, 63 per cent at VRS and 32.5 per cent of the farmers are either performed at the optimum scale or were close to the optimum scale (farms having scale efficiency values equal to or more than 0.90). Nearly 58, 15 and 28 percents of the farmers in the marginal farms category were found operating in the region of increasing, decreasing and constant returns respectively. Compared to marginal farmers category, there are less number of farmers operating at CRS both in small farmers category (15%) and other farmers category (22.5%). At the pooled level, only 5 per cent of the farmers are operating at DRS, majority of the farmers (73%) are operating at IRS and only 22 per cent of the farmers are operating at CRS indicating efficient utilization of credit. The log-linear regression model fitted to analyze the major determinants of credit utilization (technical) efficiency of farmer-borrowers revealed that, the three variables viz., cost of cultivation and family expenditure (both negatively influencing at 1% significant level) and family income (positively influencing at 1% significant level) are the major determinants of credit utilization efficiency across all the selected farmers categories and at pooled level. The analysis further indicate that, escalation in the cost of cultivation of crop enterprises in the region, rise in family expenditure and prior indebtedness of the farmers are showing adverse influence on the credit utilization efficiency of the farmer-borrowers.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-22
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• 1995

In this study an attempt was made to evaluate the economics of dairy farming in selected areas of Bangladesh. Data from 20 randomly selected farms were collected by survey method. Results show that cross-bred cows were more in number (2.55) in those farms than that of local cows (0.65). The number of cross-bred cows increased as the farm sizes increased. The production of milk per cross-bred cow was higher (5.66 litres) than the local ones (2.23 litres). Highest (5.74 litres) milk yield per cross-bred cow was recorded in large farms. The average lactation period for crossbred cows was higher (304 days) than the local cows (210 days). In production cost of farms, concentrates took the highest share (35.19%) followed by labour charges (23.64%). The production cost and gross returns for mini dairy farms were higher in large farms (TK. 183,005 and TK. 187,544, respectively), compared to medium and small farms. The benefit-cost ratio of all farms was 1 : 1.03, indicating that mini dairy farming is economically profitable. In addition, each farm created an annual employment opportunity of 649.70 man-days which was met by both male and female labourers. The small farms employed more female family labourers while the large farms depended more on hired labourers. The expansion of dairy farming with cross-bred cows is suggested for accelerating income and employment opportunities in rural Bangladesh.