Geographia Polonica (2003) vol. 76, iss. 1

The agricultural restructuring in Hungary 1990-2001

Katalin Koväcs

Geographia Polonica (2003) vol. 76, iss. 1, pp. 55-72 | Full text

Abstract

This paper considers agricultural restructuring in Hungary. The break--up of cooperatives and changes in farm ownership and organizational structures occurred extensively in the decade following the issuing of the collectivization laws, and resulted in a mixed farm structure with various forms of corporate and individual commercial farms. In the second half of the 1990s, the organizational form of large-scale farms tended to change. The new model allowed for a rapid concentration of assets in the hands of rela-tively few investors, with voting rights proportionate to ownership. The equivalent of this process among small-scale producers was the emergence of the commercial farm sector, and, in parallel, the withdrawal of large numbers of producers from commodity production into self-sufficient plot farming. However, there have been pronounced regional differen-ces in the agricultural restructuring process in relation to factors such as natural endow-ments and location relative to urban centres and developing zones.

Keywords: agriculture, post-socialist transformation, concentration processes, commercial farm sector, self-sufficient farming, Hungary

Katalin Koväcs, Department for Regional Development Research, Centre for Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1385 Budapest 62, P.O. Box 833. Hungary