Agricultural sector

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The agricultural sector comprises the entire economy of agricultural production from the animal and plant world . The economics of the agricultural sector is agricultural economics , the more comprehensive natural and human science is agricultural science . The policy of the field is agricultural policy .

To the subject

According to the three-sector theory of Clark and Fourastié, the economy is generally divided into primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. The primary sector includes the direct use of natural resources , primary production , i.e. the extraction of goods without processing. This primary production is divided into the agricultural sector and the mining sector (including related areas) - with mining being included in the secondary ( industrial ) sector due to its dimensions in the early sector models . The agricultural sector as a macroeconomic sector then also includes the subsequent processing of the animal and plant products obtained , and various activities that enable production and processing.

Commonly, the term of the Agrarian with the Agriculture equated to the agricultural sector but also includes the horticulture , the forestry including timber harvesting , the fisheries , including aquaculture , and several smaller specialties, such as hunting , beekeeping , collection and harvest of uncultivated natural resources , as well as the basic Production of food (like milling ), known as the first stage of processing . All in all, this is summarized today under agribusiness (agriculture and food industry) - which also includes food retailing or gastronomy , which in the sector model are already included in the tertiary sector (service economy). Other areas that can also be assigned to the agricultural sector are, for example, the first processing stages of natural agricultural products that are not suitable for consumption, such as the textile industry , perfumery , cosmetics and pharmaceuticals , charcoal burning or agricultural machinery , engineering amelioration such as clearing , irrigation , erosion protection and the basic structure of agricultural areas (e.g. the construction of rice terraces or fish ponds), transport logistics within the above-mentioned areas, or pest control , genetic engineering as far as it affects livestock and crops, as well as advice , agricultural marketing and research in the sector , and also Scientific services such as soil science , agroecology or agro- meteorology . The allocation of such areas varies depending on the context. A branch of the agricultural sector in the real sense that is increasing in importance, however, is the production of renewable energy resources and raw materials for the chemical industry and process engineering (sustainable new materials). Another function of agriculture that is growing in industrialized countries, but which can no longer be assigned to the classic concept of productivity, is landscape maintenance in the sense of increasing recreational value , including gardening , and managed nature and environmental protection ( environmental services ).

The agricultural sector in economic classifications

In the modern standard classification for official statistics , the agricultural sector usually forms a basic main group.

The UN's international economic classification, the International Standard Industrial Classification  (ISIC) and its EU adoption, the statistical classification of economic sectors in the European Community  (NACE) are presented as Section A Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries (NACE Rev. 2.0;) 2006, NACE 1.1 still included A  agriculture and forestry and B  fisheries and fish farming ; this subdivision, primarily characterized by marine fisheries as an important independent economic sector in some countries, was not appropriate for landlocked states). This is divided into:

Furthermore, more precise delimitations follow in the explanations as to which related activities are to be assigned to the section and which are not.

The similarly structured Central Product Classification  (CPC) of the UN for products leads in Rev.2.1 as group 0  Agriculture, forestry and fishery products in the structure:

The other product classifications divide the agricultural products into numerous main groups.

Importance of the agricultural sector

The agricultural sector is the foundation for feeding people, and for a long time it was also for meeting other basic needs , such as clothing . In a subsistence economy (self-sufficiency), which is still entirely geared towards satisfying these basic needs, the agricultural sector excludes almost all economic activity (in the modern sense). As long as the agricultural sector predominates, one speaks of an agricultural society . It was not until the Industrial Revolution that the agricultural sector was pushed back, and in modern affluent societies it now only takes up a small part, especially when it comes to the number of people employed in it. This process is called Sectoral Structural Change, and it traces the path from the hunter-gatherer cultures to the early high cultures based on the division of labor up to today's globalized world economy . The central point of this development is the comparatively minimal added value of the agricultural sector, most of the agricultural products are consumed directly , which means that an agricultural society hardly produces any means of work that serve as multipliers in economic output. In addition, the value chain remains short, the majority of the population remains employed in the agricultural sector. Historically, the path out of a purely agricultural society is a lengthy process, and in the modern world economy the agricultural states permanently lag behind the industrial states because they do not become competitive in the production of non-agricultural products; they fall into a kind of export-import trap in which the highly refined industrial goods can be imported cheaper than they are produced in the country, which further paralyzes self-development (a cofactor of neocolonialism ). The modern concept of emerging countries is based on the fact that once the agricultural share has fallen below a certain threshold, the leap into an industrial and service society can take place relatively quickly. The countries with large mineral resources, i.e. a high proportion of mining in primary production, take a different route.

Europe

In the European Union in 2010 around 25 million people were employed in the agricultural sector, or 5% of the total population (503 million), and around 12 million people were employed , also 5% of the total workforce. This shows that the proportion of family workers helping out, as has long been typical in the agricultural sector, is still very high. The share of employees in the family business is also over 90%, and there are around 11 million farmers (in the sense of the business owner), only every twelfth employee in the sector is a paid employee ( agricultural worker ). However, only about one-seventh (3.5 million, 14%) as were full-time working for another under a third it was the main occupation (7 million, 28%), more than half were only a sideline business. The share of agricultural workers had fallen by almost a fifth since 2001. In particular, the proportion of work performed by unpaid workers has decreased, while that of employees has remained largely constant, so it is primarily the traditional smallholder families that are disappearing . This shows that even in highly industrialized Europe, the structural change in the sector is by no means over. The east-west divide is typical, the recently acceded Romania still has an agricultural employment share of more than 30%, and Bulgaria 20%, so both still have agrarian features, Poland has 10%, while for example Germany, England or Sweden only now Range of 1.5%, a value range that can be assessed as the preliminary final development of deagrarization. Other more agrarian areas are Greece and Portugal, each with a 10% share. This distribution typically correlates with the population density (apart from Scandinavia with the rather high proportion of unproductive wasteland ). In the non-EU countries the trend of the east-west divide continues.

Within the agricultural sector, agriculture - in the sense of the threefold structure of the sector - consistently makes up the majority; in Sweden and Slovakia, for example, forestry is quite high with a third, in most countries, both the agricultural and non-agricultural countries, but significantly lower . In countries like the Netherlands, the proportion of those employed in horticulture is already significantly higher than that of those employed in traditional agriculture, a reflection of the extremely intensified agricultural economy. The share of fishing is consistently 5%, in the sea bordering states with more important deep-sea fishing as well as in the inland states with primarily pond farming .

See also

Web links

Europe:

Austria:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Definition of NACE Rev. 2, Section A: “Use of natural plant and animal resources” (without taking into account more specific botanical taxonomy, such as classifying mushrooms as a separate kingdom).
  2. ↑ cf. for example definition of the Duden , quoted in Agriculture Federal Agency for Civic Education - used here as a generic term.
  3. ↑ The English term horticulture is to be equated with the cultivation of field vegetables , the mixed area between field cultivation and horticulture, plantation-like fruit cultivation and similar crops such as aromatic plants , cut flowers, etc. (i.e. all non-cereal plants), while market gardening (which refers to the Delivery of the urban markets refers) denotes the small-scale diverse cultivation in classic house gardens ; see Horticulture and Market garden , English Wikipedia - this distinction is unusual in German and the expressions have no real equivalent.
  4. ↑ In this sense, the word "economy" historically primarily refers to the agricultural economy , and "manage" primarily the farmer and housekeeping .
  5. ↑ cf. the example in the agricultural sector. Freie Universität Berlin: Basic knowledge of economics for non-economists (accessed March 1, 2017).
  6. ↑ European Commission: How many people work in agriculture in the European Union? An answer based on Eurostat data sources. Series EU Agricultural Economics Briefs No. 8 July 2013 (pdf, ec.europa.eu).
  7. ↑ a b European Commission 2013, How many people work in agriculture in the European Union? P. 2.
  8. ↑ European Commission 2013, p. 2 and How many people work in agriculture in the EU according to the National Accounts? P. 9.
  9. ↑ European Commission 2013, Graph 1 Evolution of agricultural labor input in the EU 15 - Data from the EAA p. 7.
  10. ↑ a b European Commission 2013, Table 5 Employment in the agricultural sector - Data from the National Accounts p. 9; and Map 1 Employment in the primary sector in 2010, by NUTS 3 regions - Data from the Regional Accounts , p. 13.
  11. ↑ a b European Commission 2013, p. 9, column 2; and Table 9 Share of agriculture in total employment - National Accounts vs LFS p. 16 (comparison between agriculture in the narrower sense and NACE sector A).