COMPARISON OF FARM SIZE CALCULATION IN PLANT PRODUCTION IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE SLOVAK AND CZECH REPUBLIC
The agricultural sector in the Czech and Slovak Republic has problems in big and also in small farms. The pa- per is based on the assumption of the family farm algorithm, which is focused on the plant production. A family farm is represented by two adults and two children. The aim is to calculate the minimum size of the farm in hectare needed to achieve the average income (in the national economy) of the 4-member family in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. The algorithms for determining the size of a family farm focused on crop farming in the corn production area in the economic and production conditions of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic were given the following inputs: the average annual income of a 4 member family, own costs for chosen crops, prices crops, average subsidies for agricultural land, average annual harvests of chosen crops. Data were obtained from the ministries of agriculture and statistical offices from both states. We calculate the average 4 member family in Slovakia needs to earn minimum 16 77.44 Euro per year and in the Czech Republic 18 322.08 Euro per year. The results of the paper proved that, according to the model of an average farm focused on crop production, the acreage of 89.99 ha in Slovakia and 122.31 ha in the Czech Republic of agricultural land needs to have one family farm. We are calculating with following commodities: wheat, barley, grain maize, sunflower, oil rape, potatoes and pea. One way to track changes in farm structure is to examine trends in the average size of holding, or average herd size in the case of livestock farms. However, this measure can seriously underestimate the pace of change where much of the growth (in area farmed, or in livestock numbers) takes place on the larger holdings. The persistence of many small holdings, even though the share of the land or livestock that they control is small and may be falling, tends to mask the extent of structural change as measured by averages. The aim of submitted paper is to determine the minimum size of agricultural land of a small family farm focused on plant production in the economic and production conditions of the Czech and Slovak Republics. In the submitted paper the data on farmers has been used in Slovakia and the Czech Republic from the data of business calculations by Research Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics from Slovakia and Research Institute of Agricultural Economy from Czech Republic. Key words: farm size, agricultural land, crop production, crops, costs, prices, subsidies.