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Hungary Agriculture
The success of the agricultural sector in large part
has
underpinned the country's high standard of living relative
to the
other countries of Eastern Europe. Agriculture provided an
abundance of food, that, at least until the late 1980s,
reinforced social and political stability. Hungary's farms
also
supplied about 25 percent of the country's
convertible-currency
exports, which were key because they funded imports of
Western
technology vital to industrial development. But the
agricultural
system also faced several nagging problems, including high
production costs, difficulties in carving out new markets,
and
dependence on imported protein feeds, agricultural
machinery,
nonnitrogenous fertilizers, and other inputs.
In the late 1980s, agricultural output was divided
about
equally between plant and animal production. The country's
main
crops were corn, wheat, and sugar beets; its main animal
products
were poultry, hogs, eggs, and milk (see
table 9,
Appendix).
Hungary had been a net exporter of grain since 1973 and in
the
late 1980s was Eastern Europe's largest exporter of meat
and meat
products.
Hungarian agriculture's capital-intensive nature and
its
scale of production were closer to West European than East
European levels. The agricultural sector used fewer but
more
powerful tractors in 1986 (53,947) than it did in 1970
(67,472).
Hungary also reduced the amount of irrigated land and cut
fertilizer use. Irrigated lands shrank from an average of
249,100
hectares in the 1971-75 period to 162,600 hectares in
1986.
Fertilizer use fell from 224 kilograms per hectare in 1975
to 212
in 1986, while manure use grew slightly.
In 1986 the 129 state farms worked 26.1 percent of the
country's cultivated land (2,159 hectares), employed 17.6
percent
of the agricultural work force (163,000), and produced
17.6
percent of the country's agricultural gross output (about
US$1.2
billion--see;
table 10, Appendix). Cooperative farming
remained
the largest social sector in the agricultural sector. In
1986
some 1,260 cooperative farms worked 76 percent of the
cultivated
land, employed 74.1 percent of the agricultural work force
(691,000), and produced 51 percent of the country's
agricultural
gross output (US$3.4 billion).
In 1986 cooperative-farm members' household plots
combined
with auxiliary and private farms to produce 31.3 percent
of
agricultural gross output. These producers also supplied
significant portions of specific crop and animal products.
For
example, in 1986 household plots and private farms
produced 76
percent of Hungary's potatoes, 74.7 percent of its
vegetables,
58.6 percent of its fruits, 48.8 percent of its wine
grapes, 24.1
percent of its cattle, 55.5 percent of its pigs, and 43.1
percent
of its poultry.
Data as of September 1989
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