Equipping of croatian agricultural households with machinery and equipment

An analysis of Croatian agricultural households' level of equipment with machinery and equipment was conducted on the basis of data provided in the Agricultural Census 2003. In Croatia, agriculture is the primary or secondary economic activity for 448.532 households and 1.485.647 people, representing 33.5% of the total population. Croatian agricultural households possess 1.162.612 ha of total available land, which equates to 83.5% of the total agricultural land in the nation. The average agricultural household has 2,59 ha, from which 1,92 ha is used for agricultural purposes, and the average surface of each parcel is 0,45 ha. Our analysis of data indicated that a large proportion of agricultural households does not have adequate machinery and equipment; however, on a practical basis, households that are well equipped don't have enough land for rational use of machinery. Only 35.5% of households have four-wheel tractors with an average power of 34,0 kW. Aside from deficient households which have tractors, and relatively low-powered ones, 7,35 kW of tractor power is used per one hectare of cultivated land, which is much more than fully developed countries in the world have. The most difficult situation is the lack of irrigation equipment - only 2.1% of households possess irrigation equipment and only 0.6% of the land area is irrigated. The research effort and analysis indicate that we should apply developed-European-country models to determine rational use of modern machinery and equipment for Croatian agricultural households.