Machinery sharing arrangements: the theory and practice of „virtual farms” in the Hungarian agriculture

Takács, István – Baranyai, Zsolt

Keywords: Machinery sharing arrangements: the theory and practice of „virtual farms” in the hungarian agriculture

The present paper consists of two main logical units: one theoretical and one empiri-cal part. The theoretical chapter introduces and explores the concept of so-called „vir-tual farm”, which is a very specific form of cooperation among farmers. The virtual (quasi) farm means those types of farming cooperation among individual farms (natu-ral entities) which are agreed upon and set up by the owners in order to operate their own or jointly acquired or hired capital goods at improved capacity – by increasing their exploitation – thus reducing the cost of capacity unit. Therefore this special coop-eration more or less maintains the independence of farmers by also ensuring that the utilization of relevant resources (primarily machines) is made large-scale and highly efficiently. As regards the essence of virtual farms, they are nothing more than coop-eration or partnership concerning production. Considering the structural problems of Hungarian agriculture, the competitiveness and rationality of virtual farms can be con-firmed.
The empirical part of the paper evaluates the present situation and future prospects of joint machinery arrangements. In the frames of a survey made among individual farms, the cooperation activity in three fields of machinery sharing has been examined, namely: machinery services on the basis of mutuality, renting the machinery to each other and joint ownership of machines. Our results reveal different degree of farmer’s activity in the different areas of cooperation, but, in general, it can be concluded that this degree is typically low. The experiences of research lead to the conclusion that none of the forms of cooperation where the dependence of farmers is strong or requires long-term commitment will be implemented among the responding farms. If the ma-chinery capacities required for the farm cannot be solved in the frames of independent investment, they will still be ensured in the frames of hired machine services.

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