Hungary Small-Scale Farming
Farm house in Tata
Courtesy Sam and Sarah Stulberg
Small-scale producers--individuals or small groups who
tilled
household plots or operated small farms--concentrated more
on
labor-intensive output or activities in which the risks of
investment were to be assumed by those doing the work. In
the
late 1980s, Hungary had three types of small-scale farming
units:
approximately 623,000 household plots of cooperative
members,
about 792,000 small auxiliary farms of nonagricultural or
state-farm employees, and a few private farms.
Approximately 63
percent of the population participated in the small-scale
agriculture sector. The combined contribution of household
plots
and auxiliary and private farms to gross agricultural
output was
31.5 percent in 1975 and 31.3 percent in 1986. Successful
integration of small-scale farming into the agricultural
sector
kept overall production levels high.
The government imposed few restrictions on the sale of
output
in the small-scale farming sector, and supply and demand
determined prices in a free market. Thus, producers had a
strong
incentive to work hard and produce more. Before the
mid-1980s,
cooperatives were hostile to household producers. In the
late
1980s, however, officials proclaimed that private
household
farming was a permanent component of agriculture under
socialism.
The central government encouraged cooperatives to assist
members
with household plots to boost production by providing
seed,
transport, machinery, advice, and marketing assistance.
Household
producers also qualified for subsidies, tax breaks, loans,
and
discount prices for machinery and agricultural chemicals.
Regulations limited the size of household plots to 0.6
hectares
of cropland and 0.23 hectares of vineyard or orchard per
worker.
The government abandoned earlier limits on livestock.
Pensioners,
housewives, dependents, and others performed most of the
work on
household plots and small-scale farms. Their labor
amounted to
about 2.3 billion man-hours annually and outstripped the
total
number of man-hours worked in large-scale farming.
Data as of September 1989
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