Hungarian Agriculture on the Doorstep of the European Union
Hungarian Agriculture on the Doorstep of the European Union

Summary/Abstract: Like all the other countries of central and eastern Europe, Hungary has experienced at least five substantial changes in its political system during the last fifty years. Before World War II, Hungarian agriculture was characterised by feudal relations, landlordism and large masses of immiserated workers (but very few peasants, in the real sense of the word). The picture was completed by the Catholic Church as the major landowner, owning more than 20 % of arable land. It was evident that the most important democratic measures after the war were going to be linked to radical land reform. Strong evidence of the vitality and adaptability of the Hungarian land workers and their powers of self-renewal is that, in spite of diverse changes, they have never stopped improving Hungarian agriculture. It has to be emphasised that Hungarian agriculture is well supplied with land and labour but, typically, it is extremely under-capitalised. This, among other things, explains the lack of development of the middle classes. At the same time, all these changes were abrupt – they were not transformations or “changes in trend” as a result of organic development – and they wasted the most scarce resource: capital. Now, we begin again to make plans for the development of agriculture and the creation of an appropriate structure that best responds to the challenges of the EU.

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