Government‘s Support for Farmers’ Knowledge Dissemination and its improvement

Abstract

All over the World in evaluation of economic growthfactors, knowledge is playing more and more importantrole. The supporters of the concept of knowledge-basedeconomy (Burton–Jones, 1999; Romer, 1986; 1990)address knowledge as the resource necessary for thegrowth of competitive ability. Only the countries whichapplying up-to-date knowledge create innovative productsor services, may expect higher price, and at the same timehigher surplus value. Finally due to higher incomereceived, higher taxes are paid, budged increases andlarger opportunities for solving the problems of socialisolation appear. Facing such a great benefit of knowledgethe question arises whether the state should not supportknowledge spread at the same time ensure further growthof competitive ability and welfare of the country. Theopinions of scientists are different on this point.Krugman (1986, 1994, 1996) claims that the marketperfectly solves questions, and intervention may onlyimpair the mechanism of self-adjustment unfreezing noneffectivestructure of the market. Other scientists(Vilpišauskas, 2004; Soete, 2002) think that the state mustbear the responsibility for assurance of knowledge spread.Talking exceptionally about agricultural support thereare also some disagreements about the form of the supportfor farmers‘. In Lithuania farmers are rendered support invarious forms: investment support, manufacture subsidies,support for knowledge spread, and others. Only onetendency of the support is analysed in this article, i.e., thesupport for knowledge dissemination.In the article the effect of knowledge spread on thegrowth and competitive ability of the state is emphasised.The attention is directed to the classification of researchand due to this also to the possibilities of differentknowledge spread. Usually knowledge is useful only whileit is new, therefore it is subject to up-to-date scientificresearch. The competitive ability is most efficientlyincreased upon prompting basic research and knowledgespread obtained as the result of this research. Suchpromotion is indirect business promotion, since usuallyfunctions of basic research and knowledge spread areperformed by scientific institutes.The article determines the effect of the support forknowledge spread on the profit of farmers‘. Due to the dataof questionnaires it was determined, that farmersembracing the support for knowledge spread obtain betterresults. Still farmers, who do not find out anything newduring the seminars, achieve similar results to those whichare achieved by the farmers, who obtained knowledge inthe seminars. Therefore it may be said, that the possibilitiesof farmer’s knowledge spread improvement is notcompletely used. In this case seminars should bedifferentiated according to levels, because in the futureexpansion of supply of free of charge seminars andtrainings, increasingly larger number of farmers insponsored seminars will not obtain any new knowledge.Knowledge promulgated in the seminars should be basedonly on basic research, in such a way a number of farmers,who find out nothing new in a seminar, would decrease.Knowledge is constantly getting old, besides learningis a continuous process. Therefore the demand of farmersfor new knowledge should always remain provided thespread in the seminars and trainings is really new.Participation of the farmers in the seminars had someinfluence on sufficiency of their knowledge, since those,who did not lack knowledge about agricultural business,more often took part in the seminars compared to those,who lack knowledge about agricultural business. Whenfacing the changes in technologies, knowledge demandshould affect even those, who recently had enoughknowledge in agricultural business. Thus, after theevaluation of research results, the assumption that theimpact of knowledge spread on the results of farmers willremain, as well as the benefit of support for knowledgespread and farmers‘ profits, may be sustained. Thereforethe extent of support for knowledge spread is worth to beincreased on the account of other support means.