Assessment of the impact of land quality on competitiveness of enterprises

Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the results of assessing the impact of land quality on the competitiveness of agricultural enterprises. Methodology / approach. In this study, we used such methods: econometric modeling (for the study of the relationship between land quality and competitiveness of farms); economic-statistical and monographic (for the assessment and analysis of the impact of land quality on the competitiveness of enterprises); abstract-and-logical (for theoretical generalization and analysis of the research results); graphical (for the visual representation of the revealed dependencies). Our research has been done on a selected sample of agricultural enterprises of districts of Kharkiv, Volyn and Chernihiv region, which represent all the soil-climatic zones of Ukraine. The time range of this study covers the years 2010–2016. Results. This study presents empirical evidence for the impact of land quality on the competitiveness of agricultural enterprises in Ukraine. The obtained results prove the hypothesis of a positive relationship between land quality and the level of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises, however, the degree of influence of land quality differs significantly in different soil-climatic conditions. Unlike the area of inadequate humidification (Kharkiv region), in the zone of sufficient moisture supply (Volyn and Chernihiv region), in absolute and relative terms, the increase in land quality had a greater impact on the sub-index of competitiveness by yield, than the increase in production intensity. At the same time, with a low intensity of production, it is almost impossible to achieve a zone of competitiveness even at high quality land. Originality / scientific novelty. For the first time, one- and two-factor linear and nonlinear (quadratic) econometric models were developed, which made it possible to carry out quantitative assessment of the impact of land quality on the formation of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises in various soil-climatic zones of Ukraine. The provision on the formation of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises on lands of different quality, taking into account the level of production intensity, was further developed. Practical value / implications. The developed econometric models can be used for (i) estimation and forecasting of the level of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises depending on the parameters of land quality and intensity of production; (ii) determining the effect of measures to improve the quality of land on the competitiveness of agricultural enterprises; (iii) determining the impact of land degradation (quality deterioration) on competitiveness of farms; (iv) identification of reserves to improve competitiveness.