Measurement of agricultural producers' groups performance: Background, features and objectives

The economic performance of an enterprise obviously depends on various internal and external factors. Those factors are not only the input variables entering various aggregated calculations but also analytical inputs as the effectiveness of company processes, management of costs, innovation capabilities, further sustainable development and in the case of agriculture in the EU also the public subsidy schemes implemented through the EU Common Agricultural Policy. In this article, the basic economic performance measures are presented, and their applicability on the sample of agricultural producers' groups and wholesale entities is verified. There are specific constraints of these entities, as for example in the producers' groups legal agreements ensuring the sale of member enterprises' production or cooperative purchasing of production inputs. Therefore, the performance of agricultural producers’ groups directly affects the economic performance of all participating entities. According to the structure and characteristics of agricultural producers' groups may be inferred that whilst the common performance measurement techniques are applicable on the majority of companies, agricultural producers' groups represent specific entities and therefore there is a need for adjusted performance measurement approach. The aim of this paper is thus firstly, to discuss the traditional techniques for performance measurement and highlight the input data sources, as well as practically verify their applicability on the sample of Czech agricultural producers' groups and wholesale, both operating within the field of fruit and vegetables; and secondly, to provide a basis for further research in employment of analytical performance measurement systems as Balanced Scorecard or Benchmarking in this branch of business.