Articles
ECONOMICAL EFFECT OF TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT IN HORTICULTURE
That is by no means an easy task, all the more since technical development is in most cases an expensive business and requires much investment, while its effect is beneficial when investment expenditures are recovered quickly, and adequate profits are yielded.
The fact that technical development cannot be confined to modernizing machinery or construction is to be borne in mind.
In addition to the said technical factors, it covers chemical, biological and, last but not least, human factors, too.
In contrast to other authors I hold the view that human factors cannot be separated from the system of technical development.
In my opinion, it is immaterial whether we classify technical development as a factor falling within the domain of production means or that of production relations.
Moreover, the result will be inaccurate when technical development will be separated from the social environment where its effect is felt.
No doubt, technical development does have certain characteristics that are equally valid under socialist and capitalist conditions.
It would be wrong, for example, to consider the virtues of a technical achievement or a practical new procedure in an isolated manner and by themselves, and to examine as to in which country they were completed or where their rational idea was born.
On the other hand, the social concomitants of the development are to be judged against the social background, since they are accorded primary importance in socialist countries where human considerations are in the centre.
Technical development, then, consists of a chain of manifold, complicated endeavours, no matter from what angle we approach it.
This is valid particularly for technical development in horticulture.
Some time back it was held that technical development decreases, by itself, production costs in horticulture.
This view is connected with the fact that technical devices are rather scarce in horticulture.
From this point of view, its branches were at times stepchildren of technics, and failed to keep up with other branches where technical progress gained ground relatively easier and quicker.
Of course, this differentiation is having objective causes, too.
Whether we talk about growing vegetables, fruit, grapes, or ornamental plants, there are much more individual working procedures, requiring special handling, than is the case with most field-crops.
The production