EMPLOYMENT OF MEMBERS OF SMALLHOLDINGS IN AGRICULTURE AND OTHER ACTIVITIES

Abstract

Using figures obtained by an enquiry in 1966 which covered 750 smallholdings in 75 villages, the article analyses employment and income rates of members of smallholdings employed in agriculture and elsewhere. The article deals in particular with the existing situation according to individual categories of smallholdings and agricultural districts in Croatia. The author find that certain regions show considerable differences between farming conditions and the employment rate among members of smallholdings and that these differences are reflected in the rate of income per employed member and per smallholding. Mixed households, i. e. those whose members are employed both in agriculture and outside it, generally show higher employment rates and income levels than purely agricultural households. Since such households exist chiefly in regions with poor farming conditions, it is in these very regions that individual households realize a higher income at present than do those in purely farming districts. In conditions of private farming, income per capita and smallholding in this country appears to be increasingly depedent on the level of employment and less on the actual size of smallholdings, and the author calls for suitable measures for increasing employment. He regards employment as the crucial economic question of private smallholdings, especially in purely farming districts. In this view higher employment would help to level out the existing differences between the individual regions, ensure a better utilization of the economic and working potentialities of rural districts, and help to resolve a number of related social and economic problems of agriculture and the rural population