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Hungary Large-Scale Farming
Large-scale farming--made up of state and cooperative
farms--
focused on such activities as grain and fodder production,
which
were capital-intensive and in which economies of scale
were most
significant. A 1985 law transformed state farms from
state-administered organizations into self-governing
enterprises
under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture and
Food.
However, state farms were subject to more state control
than
cooperatives in such matters as appointment of managers
and the
use of profits, and state-farm employees were government
employees who worked for fixed wages and bonuses.
A cooperative farm was owned and managed by its
members, who
elected a chairman to manage the farm according to its
charter.
Although cooperative farms could employ workers,
cooperative
members were technically not "employees." The cooperative
paid
employees a set wage; members received a base salary and a
year-end dividend based on net profits. Cooperatives were
also
freer than state farms in deciding how to use their
profits, and
many cooperatives delegated certain operations to
autonomous work
teams or individuals who divided the operation's net
profits. The
cooperative farms owned only about half the land they
worked; the
state and individuals owned the rest.
In the late 1980s, the government still fixed prices
for a
large portion of agricultural production, including corn,
wheat,
and beef cattle. In addition, all state and cooperative
farms
received some form of state subsidy, and about 27 percent
received fixed-rate subsidies for farming low-quality
land.
Hungary's large-scale farming sector has become
increasingly
concentrated as state and cooperative farms have merged.
Between
1960 and 1986, the number of agricultural cooperatives
dropped by
72 percent to 1,260. The amount of arable land per
cooperative
stood at 3,024 hectares in 1986.
Data as of September 1989
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