The Strategic Questions of The Development of The Hungarian Agriculture

This study has been created as in the last 20 years Hungarian agriculture has not had and even at present Hungary does not have a comprehensive economic strategy.

To prepare this would not be our task, however, as producers we have framed some views. These have and will have an effect on our lives and our society as well.

Many people evaluate and understand the data of our agriculture’s accomplishments differently. From the producers’ point of view, we can see that, similar to the agriculture all around the world, two main groups are dominant among the many types of producers:

SELF-SUPPORTING FAMILY FARMER and COMPETITION SPHERE FARMER

Both economic groups are equally essential and are equal in agriculture. For their efficient work, paying particular attention to the even chance, we need to work out a new agricultural strategy.

Stragegic aims:

• sustainable, environmentally friendly agriculture
• the production of safe, good quality and great quantity of food
• the assurance of good living for farmers

To reach these aims, we find it important to review the following topics as only with new means can we live up to the challenges of the future.

• soil
• water
• environment protection and rurality
• legal background, bureaucracy, finance

The soil, as the means of our agriculture, the supporter of the humanity, is our nation’s largest value, therefore, its protection and correct use is our future’s security.

The steps for the creation of stability:

• making of the soil act, which would frame the solutions to the challenges of the following 20-30 years
• the use of land (at present-2500 hectares/economy) and the change of the barriers of the ownership of land (300 hectares/person or 6000 AK/person)
• helping of Hungarian citizens to get land (selling of the state-owned property and long term loans for farmers to buy land)
• the immediate start of recruiting members
• the support of only those farmers who use the soil appropriately
• the strengthening of the responsibility of local organizations, local governments, the delegates of the farmers
• the stricter supervision of soil and protection of the soil

The management of water should be so that it would encourage to keep the water inland and use it (watering). The protection against floods and inland innundation need to be aligned with the already existing plans of building reservoirs. These should take into consideration the need for water of those areas that can be watered even in years when there would be drought.

The fees of the watering with surface water should be eliminated. These measures could bring.

Serious change in the competitiveness of the Hungarian agriculture as well as in the ability of creating new jobs.

The question of environment and that of the development of rurality need to be addressed together so that the decrease of the rural population would stop and so that the depopulation in some regions would be reversable. In accordance with this, we should support the self-supporting family farmers and the local efforts made for a liveable environment.

The people living in rural areas should remain the most important guardian of the environment, and for this aim, we should assign to this all the regualting systems.

The bureaucracy can decrease in only one way: if with the simplification of our law system, we utilize all the liquid assets so that we could make Hungarian farmers involved with:

• the restoration of the proportion of the animal husbandry and plant growing
• the operating of the processing industry and commerce with farmers’ ownership
• the basis of producing should be the farming traceability
• we should have an appropriate quality and large quantity of goods
• with the stability of producing raw material, using the possibilities of horizontal and vertical integration we would be present on the market with highly processed goods
• we should have goods proudly labelled as ’Hungarian products’, which would contain all the necessary information about the producer, the place of production and the mode of preparation, so that the consumer could look for our products

This study, without being complete, has been written from agricultural producers’ perspective. We are welcome to any debate and constructive elaboration of this topic.