Identifier

etd-06052014-124029

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Human Resource Education and Workforce Development

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to determine Ukrainian farmers characteristics based on demographic information, describe their agricultural production, land ownership, best farming practices and determine factors that could influence farmers’ gross income. Of the tree Oblasts selected, a total of 250 farmers were randomly selected in two of the oblasts and 150 in the other (due to the size of the population in the smaller sample) for personal interviews by the raion specialists. Random samples were drawn from these lists using a computerized random numbers table. Survey was designed to collect necessary information. Raion specialists received one-day training session to learn personal interview techniques. Overall, most of the farmers, (approximately 84%) indicated to have a degree of technical college or above. The average age of farmers was 45.8 which approximately 11 years younger than farmers age in the United States. Also, this study found that most of the farmers - (545), received their land from the village council title and use farming as their major source of family income. However, only 25% of farmers indicated receiving financial credit for agricultural production. The major reason for not applying for financial credit was “high interest rate”. Also this research concluded that size of agricultural land was the most influential factor on Ukrainian farmers’ gross income which correlates with high amount of black soil in Ukraine that requires less agricultural inputs for the high crop production. Based on the research findings the researcher concluded that Ukrainian government should developed programs to improve credit accessibility with reducing annual interest rate, establish farmers’ credit unions and also develop legislation for governmental crop insurance program similar to the Catastrophic Coverage (CAT) Act that was passed in U.S. in 1994. Also, most of the participating farmers had mixed crop-livestock farming. This type of agricultural production made it very difficult to calculate specific crop gross income per hectare due to combined collected information about agricultural inputs. Further research needs to be done with more detailed information about inputs or with population of farmers with narrow crop or livestock production to be able to determine optimum size of owned or leased land.

Date

2014

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Burnett, Michael F.

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.3284

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