Die ungarische Landwirtschaft nach der Einführung der Marktwirtschaft: das Komitat Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg

Abstract

The free-market economy introduction into the Hungarian agriculture also passes through a noticeable transition phase with a great number of structural and socio-economic adaptation and transition phenomena. In Hungary, the orientation towards the national and international market is accompanied by internal and external economic and social radical change phenomena which in return resulted in a production decline and market loss for the agriculture at home and abroad. The sales loss due to the breakdown of the COMECON market is the most important phenomenon. Production declines and sales losses concern both the crops and animal production. The relationship with the decline of the manufacturing industry is clearly demontrated. With the transition to the free-market economy the significance assessment of the previous production locations change. The increasing removal of subsidy and the uncertain sales situation bring about completely changed advantage and disadvantage evaluations of agricultural production locations in connection with their natural and social locational conditions. Market requirements and natural production factors determine more distinctly than before the production profile and the efficiency of the Hungarian farms. Regional disadvantages are not longer notably compensated by subsidies. Another leg bearing the main weight of the Hungarian agriculture, namely the, since more than 20 years existing production of agricultural raw materials for the industry, has almost complety disappeared in the wake of the nation-wide recession process. The, with the social drastic change in the country associated, reprivatisation process in agriculture results in the installation of many small farms poor in soil and deprived of financial means. Their long-term competitiveness is low and depends on the speed of Hungary's economy opening itself to the EC. The relatively unfavourable natural provisions of the Scabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg territory complicate the transition to the free-market economy for agriculture in this komitat. The existing specialisation in production is very cost-intensive and now especially crisis-prone on the mostly low-yield soils.