IDENTIFICATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN GERMAN FRUIT-GROWING FARMS

The author of this contribution is business adviser and deals among others with economic analysis and advice of fruit-growing businesses in the fruit production area of the Niederelbe.

Primarily by using a thorough statistical analysis of book-keeping data a contribution to the explanation of success differences will be given.

In the empirical examination the analysis of the available annual account data of 77 fruit-growing businesses is carried out. To reach a sufficient homogeneity of the businesses, only those who sell more than 75% their products through a marketing-co-operative or a wholesaler are analysed. The date of five financial years (1993/94 to 1997/98) are included into the analysis. The key figure "farm income per hectare" is used for the classification of the success of the businesses. The inquiry for the reasons for the success differences uses averages of calculated key figures. They are checked with statistical methods to find out whether there are significant differences between successful and less successful farms or not.

It becomes clear that the success in fruit growing farms depend essentially on the obtained revenues while no clear relations are recognisable at the costs and thus also the amount of factor-inputs. Therefore the “sales revenues with apples” with the two factors "price" and "yield" are decisive starting-points to the clarification of the success differences and represent success factors which provide a high contribution.

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