Contractor

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Contractor during the grain harvest

Contractors are entrepreneurs who provide commercial services for other companies. The corresponding process is known as the wage procedure .

The term is often used as a synonym for “agricultural service provider” or “service provider in rural areas”. They do a wide variety of work on account, especially in agriculture ( e.g. harvesting , fertilization, plant protection and soil cultivation ), but also gardening and landscaping , civil engineering and work for municipal clients ( municipality , state, etc.).

Contractors are part of a value chain . However, you do not become the owner of the goods on which you provide the service (see also contract for work ).

From the point of view of the client, the work of the contractor stands between in- house production and external procurement (“make or buy”).

definition

The term “contractor” is not clearly defined (especially since some operate under the term “Agro- / Agrar-Service”). Here are the most common definitions:

  • Federal Employment Agency: "... recorded in the statistics as soon as you have at least one employee who is subject to social security contributions. However, they can be assigned to different economic classes and sub-classes. Depending on where you focus on your work. "
  • Tax office: "... companies that generate more than 30% of their turnover or more than 100,000 euros / year outside the company."
  • Swiss Federal Administration: "Company that carries out agricultural work for third parties for a fee [sic!]"
  • BLU eV, product + market: “... sometimes farmers too. Contractors who generate more than 50% of their turnover with contract services are referred to as 'professional contractors'. "
  • An agricultural technology manufacturer: "... companies that use at least one machine from our range on an inter-farm basis."
  • Trade journal contractors : "... companies that speak of themselves as contractors in our telephone interviews or state that they are also active outside the company in addition to their core business."

description

Clients use the services of contractors for one or more of the following aspects:

  • because they do not have the necessary technical equipment themselves,
  • because they have no / too few suitable workers or other required capacities (e.g. space for storage or temporary storage),
  • if you want calculation security.

For example, farms rarely have their own combine harvesters , forage harvesters or other harvesting machines . They therefore commission contractors with the grain harvest or forage harvest and often also with activities that follow in the value chain , for example loading or transport, cleaning (e.g. beets), construction of rent .

An alternative to hiring a contractor is to rent the required production equipment (legally incorrectly called "machine rental") or to procure workers yourself and carry out the work yourself at your own risk and account. Some farmers also form machine communities in which a machine is jointly procured and used. Sometimes contractors (also called wage threshing companies) also work in or for machine rings .

Statistical data

Total number of establishments 6,000 (± 10%)
of which companies with non-agricultural services approx. 2,500
Share of LU businesses in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein 60%
Total employees approx. 29,000 to 44,000
Total revenue € 2.81 billion
Investment volume / year € 585 million
Agriculture customers 300,000
Most important service areas in agriculture
Crop production: inventory management and harvest 42%
Forage recovery, organic fertilization (liquid manure / manure) 31%
Tillage and sowing 25%

* (Sources: BLU eV, Federal Employment Agency, BMELV, Franz et.al.) Further statistics can be found in the regular trend reports published by LOHNUNTERNEHMEN magazine.

education

The trainee agricultural service specialist (FAS) has existed since 2005 , because contractor associations had announced a need for appropriately trained workers. It is now even possible to become an agricultural service master (ASM).

Associations

The " BLU Bundesverband Lohnunternehmen eV" is the umbrella organization for contractors and their associations in Germany. The “Swiss contractors” are organized in their own association. In Austria, the contractors are organized in the “Association of Austrian contractors” (VLÖ).

The European Organization of Agricultural, Rural and Forestry Contractors (CEETTAR) represents contractors on a European level .

media

Contractors are not farmers or trading companies, but have special information requirements, which are mainly served by these media (alphabetically):

  • “BLU Yearbook” as a yearbook for BLU members
  • "BLU-Newsletter" as a monthly e-mail newsletter, only for BLU members
  • "LOHNUNTERNEHMEN" , the monthly trade magazine for all contractors with the claim "This is how contractors work", official body of the contractors' professional organization
  • "LU-Aktuell" as the monthly BLU magazine, only for BLU members
  • "LU-Mail" as a monthly e-mail newsletter for all interested parties

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swiss Federal Chancellery - TERMDAT search. Retrieved April 4, 2017 .
  2. ↑ LWK NRW to Agricultural Service Specialist  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.landwirtschaftskammer.de  

literature

  1. Federal Association of Contractors (Ed.): Agricultural Service Specialist . 2nd edition, Agrimedia Verlag, 2015.
  2. Specialist book: Peter Frank Beckmann: “From the wage thresher to the contractor”, Beckmann Verlag 2007