The Utilization of Family Workforce by Family Farmers in Karcag

Kovács, Éva Katalin – Pető, Károly – Kovács, Sándor

Keywords: family, hired labour, automaticity, forms of businesses, Q12, Q01.

Family and tradition play a prominent role in people’ lives in rural areas. Therefore, family business is not only a capital-based business, but also a lifestyle where adherence to independence, individual decisions and the rural is the strongest. Subsidies for family businesses is a key issue regarding rural development, as well, which are boosted by the tender system and the EU, as agriculture and this type of business require farmers to stay in one place. Therefore, a family business might be able to strengthen the retention power of rural areas over several generations. However, the right level of motivation for the young generation is crucial so that they can preserve their traditions.
This study delves into the use of family and hired labour comparing their proportions in individual and family businesses in Karcag. Necessity for the topic is backed by a previous research. It suggests that significant family labour is also present in non-family businesses. In addition, it can be observed in practice that the use of family labour is not always sufficient to carry out tasks, in which case farmers are forced to resort to hired labour. Thus, at the beginning of the research, we formulated the following hypotheses: Family farms also use hired labour (H1), but less than in the case of individual farms (H2). In addition, the use of family labour (H3) is not limited to family farms. The larger the land owned by farmers, the more family labour is used (H4).
Processing statistical databases and completing questionnaires took place during the research. The results were analysed by non-parametric probes, crosstab analysis and Spearman correlation.
Based on the above-mentioned findings we concluded that the use of family labour is significant in individual businesses as well, but contrary to the assumptions they do not use more hired labour in comparison with family businesses. In addition, the more land they have, the more labour is used, but this does not necessarily mean family labour.

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