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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Njegovan, Zoran; Jeloécnik, Marko; Potrebić, Velibor Conference Paper Agricultural knowledge development: Investing in people (human capital) Provided in Cooperation with: The Research Institute for Agriculture Economy and Rural Development (ICEADR), Bucharest Suggested Citation: Njegovan, Zoran; Jeloécnik, Marko; Potrebić, Velibor (2012) : Agricultural knowledge development: Investing in people (human capital), In: Agrarian Economy and Rural Development - Realities and Perspectives for Romania. 3rd Edition of the International Symposium, October 2012, Bucharest, The Research Institute for Agricultural Economy and Rural Development (ICEADR), Bucharest, pp. 259-267 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/76843 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu AGRICULTURAL KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT - INVESTING IN PEOPLE (HUMAN CAPITAL)1 NJEGOVAN ZORAN2, JELOČNIK MARKO3, POTREBIĆ VELIBOR4 Summary In the paper the authors are challenging the human capital in agriculture issues and its ability to ensure development and reduce poverty, bringing such way better quality of life for the entire people. They are also discussing the role of high educational system – the causes of inefficiency and value of education people are getting. They are criticizing the position that land is overestimated and human capital underestimated, trying to identify that human capital (education, skills, experience and health are) is representing the base for the further national development. The hypothesis of the paper is to elaborate need for the better quality of the people as a factor of its prosperity. In that purpose they are bringing the critical approach to the high educational system and from that point of view the possibility of efficient management of knowledge and human capital as well. Key words: agriculture, knowledge, agro-economy, high education, human capital. INTRODUCTION Problems of agricultural development from an aspect of its role and importance within the overall economic development are the subject of permanent and comprehensive research in number of paperwork. From primordial times people have been constantly confronted to care about food and available agricultural-production space (primarily about the way of its use)5. In parallel, considering the decreasing physical abilities of land, due to its improper and excessive use for various human needs, appears a large dose of pessimism. Logically, adequate solutions have been usually sought and offered in this direction, but with, it seems, negligence of role and importance of constantly increasing human capabilities, which are able to compensate and substitute decreasing physical abilities of natural factors. This topic has been discussed for many times over the previous decades, but with resignation should be noted that mentioned approach didn’t find larger foundation, neither in professional, nor in political circles. Having this in mind, the basic intention was pointing to fact that investing in quality and knowledge of the population (primarily producers of goods and services in agriculture) can largely determine future appearance of national agriculture, as well as complete economy. Mentioned supports practice in many underdeveloped countries where by investing in knowledge were achieved significant development results. In other words, human factor can be taken as a critical factor in poverty while the land for itself is not. Therefore, for a long time developed attitude about the importance of total population to agricultural production, in modern conditions has to be expanded by necessity of quality of population (human capital) improvement, how this can be the only possibility for improvement of economic prospects for the wellbeing of poor people. This includes development of home and work experience, gaining of general and specific knowledge, information and skills through education, as well as investment in better health and physical predisposition of population. Such this model of investment was everywhere and always brought success, except in cases of unstable political conditions, as well as under recent affects of global economic crisis. Because of that, although the investment in research and development in agriculture look justified, not so often this topic is neglected or inadequately approached. Fact is that economists in developed countries are mainly dealing with the economy of developed, and that economists in developing countries follow their Western paragons. Meanwhile is forgotten that 1 Paper is a part of research project III 46006 Sustainable agriculture and rural development in the function of strategic goals achievement within Danube region, financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Serbia, project period 2011-2014. 2 Zoran Njegovan, Ph.D., Full professor, University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Agriculture, Serbia, E-mail: [email protected] 3 Marko Jeločnik, M.A., Researcher assistant, Institute of agricultural economics Belgrade, Serbia, E-mail: [email protected] 4 Velibor Potrebić, M.A., Researcher assistant, Institute of agricultural economics Belgrade, Serbia, E-mail: [email protected] 5 According to Rikardo, D. and Malthus, R. T., one of the most important world theorists at the end of XIX and beginning of XX century. 259 majority of world population is poor and that only by knowing of economics of poverty will be implied conversance of larger segment of real applicable economics. Or, as most of the poor people are engaged in agriculture, surely that then elements of agriculture economics will be known much better. Unfortunately, economists rarely understand the preferences and limitations of scantiness that poor (small farmers are classified here too) are facing with. Encourage the fact that in Serbia in recent decades, despite relative underdevelopment and low- incomes, agriculture evinced potential and economic capacity to produce sufficient quantities of quality food, both for its own and for population of countries in near and far surrounding. Support for aforementioned can be found in larger understanding of economics of agriculture and human capital, especially the segment of economics of research. It should be commended reactions showed under the influence of current trends in agriculture by critical group of farmers (leaders of developmentally oriented husbandries) toward their relation to new, more efficient production techniques and technologies, which ensured better production completeness, relative prosperity and better family economics. Aforementioned represents considerable improvement, how in Serbia still dominates traditional view that the land and natural factors, as well as the number of people engaged in agriculture are the main factors of agricultural development. According to that it isn’t a great mistake in statement that the land is overestimated. This indicates the fact that development of industry of mineral fertilizers, agro chemistry and seeds, then genetic engineering and other scientific- technical disciplines can provide growth of agricultural production without use of additional land surfaces (production growth is achieved even in conditions of its decreasing). On the other hand, additional labour is not required, as the development of agricultural mechanization and general computerization ensured its physical substitution in favour of smaller group of educated manpower that disposes with special skills and knowledge. Thus in both cases come to increase of human capita limportance6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Quality of the human factor is underestimated It’s not difficult to conclude that the land doesn’t represent a key factor of poverty in some countries (in agriculture too), but the human factor, for sure, can be. This is especially obvious during the economic crisis, which may be the primary element of overall economy exhaustion in long-term period, when usually most of measures with so-called physical character (mostly product of fiction and extrapolation) doesn’t show desired effects. Problem overcoming is exclusively transferred to the field of poverty consequences elimination (inadequate living standard). Meanwhile, as cause of newly arisen problems, approach to spiritual poverty elimination (adoption of knowledge and skills) looks unsatisfactorily and inadequately. Strategic orientation of the state towards knowledge-based