Lyaschevskaya O.V., Zakharchuk Y.V., Rieznik M.A.
Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University, Ukraine
USING THE GROUPING METHOD FOR THE ANALYSIS OF CROP PRODUCTION
Agriculture is one of the priority areas of Ukrainian economics due to the geographic location, favorable nature and climatic conditions and the resource potential of the country. Agriculture occupies an important place in the country’s production pattern and brings considerable profit. Thus, as of the late 2010, the profitability of agriculture amounts to 21.1% against average 10.58%. The share of agriculture makes up 23.33% of the total amount of GDP.
Special features of the manufacturing process allow us to single out several basic branches in agriculture, such as crop production and a livestock sector. According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, crop production amounts to 58.3% of GDP produced by the agricultural sector. The economic efficiency of crop production is considerably higher than the earning capacity of other components of the agricultural sector and as of end of 2010 made up 26.7%, while the return of the animal husbandry reaches the level of 7.8% [1].
The problem of agricultural development (of the crop production, in particular) is a heavily emphasized in the Program of Economic Reforms in Ukraine for 2010 – 2014. Due to the above mentioned, the study of the state and development of crop production in Ukraine is feasible and urgent.
Among the parameters that characterize the quality of crop produce there are the following: the size of areas under crops, crop capacity, volume of investment, subsidies from the state (public financing), the number of people employed, the number of registered companies, the amount of available equipment and the amount of fertilizers. All of them affect the volume of products made in the crop sector.
In order to conduct a detailed study of crop production in Ukraine the grouping method was selected, because it is best to study a statistic object and allows to explore of dispersion of units in the aggregate. The size of areas under crops was chosen as a clustering criterion, as this factor is one of the most important for the selected object and has a large variation.
Zakarpattya region has the least value of the factor of the planted area. This is due to peculiarities of the relief (the west region has a mountain ridge). In Zakarpattya region the volume of area under crops makes up only 14.49% of the total area. The crop production in this region is represented by such crops as grapes, potatoes, flax, oats, rye, corn, sunflower, tobacco, early vegetables, fodder beet, fruit and feed crop of herbs. A characteristic feature of the agricultural sector is a significant proportion of households that are mainly engaged in animal husbandry. The primary focus of agricultural land is forestry and wood processing industry.
The biggest area under crops is situated in Dnipropetrovsk region. This is due to the geographical location and special features of the land topography (flat ground, branching river system of the Dnipro river and its tributaries). The volume of acreage in Dnipropetrovsk region is nearly 60% of its total area. The main development lines of agricultural sector of the region are grain production, technical and vegetable crops. The development of crop production in the region is based on improving the structure of areas under crop, implementation of tillage systems, intensive technologies of cereal, sugar beet and sunflower cultivation. Odessa and Poltava region are among other regions that are the leaders in terms of areas under crops.
In 2010 in half of the regions of Ukraine the size of acreage was greater than 1017.4 thousand hectares, the average value is 1078.6 hectares. It should be noted that due to the heterogeneity of the aggregate that is indicated by the coefficient of variation which is greater than 33% and makes up 47.24%, the average value is not typical for this aggregate, and the acreage is characterized by significant fluctuations.
When applying the method of grouping, determining the number of groups and the size of grouping intervals is an important task whose solution largely affects the quality of conducted grouping. Having estimated the value of the factor of fit, which is 9.86% (i.e. less than 10%), it was determined that conducting the grouping of regions in terms of the size of areas under crops has shown that the method of unequal intervals is considered to be appropriate.
To determine the size of the intervals the progressively increasing irregular intervals were used. The groups received as a result of the analysis and the research of the effect of different qualitative and quantitative factors led to the conclusion that grouping obtained with the unequal interval method reflects the influence of, primarily, environmental factors on the rate of cultivation area.
Grouping by the coefficient of variation has proved to be effective in defining such a factor as the level of soil fertility.
Using such grouping techniques as the method for the equal number of areas in groups and the method of determining the number of groups using the Sturges’ rule is unreasonable, since in the first case we got the acreage distribution that has no economic interpretation, and in the second case it is possible to obtain blank groups.
Among the other types of grouping there is classification of regions according to the general specialization which includes five groups: agricultural, industrial, agro-industrial and industrial-agrarian regions.
In general, according to the specialization of agricultural area the regions can be divided into two groups: regions, specializing in crop production and those that specialize in animal husbandry.
However, in plant growing alone we can distinguish the following groups of regions, specializing in the cultivation of cereals, oilseeds (sunflower) and sugar beet.
Thus, applying the method of grouping, particularly defining the number and spacing of groups, depends on the characteristics of the object of research, homogeneity of the statistical aggregate, the objective of the research and some macroeconomic factors that influence the formation of values of the parameter under study.
Literature:
1. Державна служба статистики України [Web resource]. – Access mode: http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/